Starting From The End Of Times
by Anniehow
Summary: Post 4.22. What might have happened after the "to be continued" whiteout. With extra helpings of h/c. Dean, Sam, Castiel, Zachariah... COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

RATING: R gen, pre-slash Dean/Castiel  
SPOILERS: For the Season 4 finale, and not beyond  
CHARACTERS: Sam, Dean, Bobby, Castiel, Zacharia  
SUMMARY:Post 4.22. What might have happened after the "to be continued" whiteout. With extra helpings of h/c.

Disclaimer: Supernatural is owned by it's creator Kripke and the CW network, and I am in no way affiliated with them.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic is complete, and will be posted one chapter a day. Muchas gracias to Starrylizard for betaing the whole thing!

* * *

_And so the world ends, _Dean thought, _not with a whimper, but with a flash bang_.

Lucifer ground frigging zero and his brain had frozen on a stupid, mangled quote. The hero has failed, ladies and gentlemen, totally and utterly, and all he has left is being quippy, if only in his own head. He gripped Sam's shirt a little tighter, and raised his free arm to shield his eyes. The heat, the intensity of the light, the noise, it was all growing, and he had little hope of passing through with his eyeballs and eardrums intact, if experience had taught him anything about angels in their true forms. Or whatever the hell was about to come through. Odds said it was not going to care if it made a pair of puny human heads explode on its grand entrance. Probably count it as a plus, in fact. Like firecrackers or something.

And then, amidst all the confusion, he distinctly felt a hand pushing him from behind, making him stumble forward a step, Sam doing the same right beside him. And just like that, it was all gone.

He risked taking a peek, and saw a wide open space stretching out in front of him, cold dawn light bathing a familiar expanse of nature in pinks and pale yellows. Sam was still beside him. This wasn't Hell, that much he knew. In fact...

"Is this... it's the field to the east of Bobby's property," Sam said, voice high and breathless.

"We're just outside the boundaries of your friend's wards. Hope you don't mind the walk. I hear they're beneficial."

They whirled around as one. A familiar, albeit much more disheveled than usual, figure was standing just behind them, grinning jovially.

"Zachariah…" Dean acknowledged warily, "Where the hell's Cas?"

"First you banish me, now you don't even thank me for saving both your asses… Dean, Dean, Dean, you'll end up hurting my feelings, you know?"

"Like you'd have any. What have you done to Castiel?"

"Oh, nothing that little traitorous snake didn't deserve, I assure you. Don't worry about him now, I'd say you have more pressing matters to consider, mmh?" The angel looked pointedly at Sam, who paled under the scrutiny.

"Leave him out of this," Dean growled, raising a protective arm by instinct.

"_Leave him out?? _After doing all that hard work of freeing Lucifer? I think not, Dean; I'd say your little brother here has more than earned his fifteen minutes of fame," Zachariah drawled, expression growing calculating. The air around them rippled with the sound of wing beats, and two more angels appeared behind them, a woman in a creased business suit and a tall, young guy. They were surrounded.

"You can't- I was just trying to _help_," Sam spoke up, voice suspiciously nasal.

"Indeed you did," Zachariah beamed. "Don't worry Sammy my boy, we understand just a little more than you give us credit for. We know it was a sacrifice on your part. Not entirely selfless, but still! Very much in keeping with the family tradition; best intentions, disastrous consequences, all that-"

"You son of a bitch! Don't listen to him, Sam; these assholes are pleased you- you did what you did. They've wanted Lucifer free all along! They've been itching to take it out and compare lengths since the last big showdown, I bet." Dean knew his words wouldn't bother Zachariah at all, but he hoped to get a reaction out of the other angels, whom he guessed to be of a lower hierarchy. Instead they both just stood there, impassive as statutes and, he suspected, not even listening to a word the humans were saying.

Meanwhile Zach, though still thoroughly pleased with himself, acquired an expression that could very well have been bitter. "Don't tax my patience, Dean. You've already maxed out with your little stunt, and I'm the last one you want to alienate right now, considering we're all that stands between Lucifer and the rest of humanity. But perhaps we should just play this closer to home, and simply say that I'm the one who decides Sam's fate now. And I think you should hear my offer out before you start flinging about you ingratitude."

"Fuck you," Dean said at half volume, already imagining what the 'offer' entailed, but it was covered by Sam stammering: "what offer?"

"Congratulations kiddo, you've won a free trip to Heaven on the express angel airline, no stops or layovers! Complete with the package comes a thorough soul-cleansing that will leave you so spotless you'll be the envy of any housewife!"

Dean started shaking with rage, too horrified to even spit out an expletive, but Sam was only half grasping the implications of it all.

"What, you'd- you mean I'm forgiven? Just like that?? No more 'dark destiny' crap, now you absolve me and I can go to heaven?"

Zachariah raised a finger. "Ah, not quite. See, what you did, Sammy, is really very bad, not just for the world at large, but for yourself. Dean's habit of gobbling down cholesterol laced with fat and sugar has nothing on what demon blood can do to a human body. And boy have you gone the whole nine yards! You broke it, Sam. You're not even all that human anymore. But I can cleanse you; I can burn the demon out of you and leave only the original, untainted parts. And those we can accept into Heaven. Only chance you'll get of being with your brother forever after _he's_ fulfilled his destiny and his oaths. Naturally, your place would be much lower than a Champion of the Host –you did follow a demon over our own explicit advice and, let me just state that again, _freed Lucifer_- but even the cheapest ticket to Heaven, the lowered visibility zones if you will, are much better than the highest place of honor in Hell, which is about all that you can expect from the other side. So what do you say?"

Sam was silent, looking at the angel with increasing determination and no little amount of dread but, and Dean was scared to realize, there was resignation there as well.

"So your offer is to kill him now and stick whatever's left of his soul after you're done with it in your Stepford paradise? Well, screw that!"

"Tsk, tsk, Dean, you really should be more forgiving towards your brother. Do you _want_ him to go to Hell? Because without my help that's precisely where he's headed. You of all people should appreciate how anything is preferable to that, and recognize that mine is a very generous offer. Or perhaps you'd prefer to do the 'deed' yourself? I understand sometimes humans like to keep these things in the family. It's an honor thing."

"Oh, like you'd know the first thing about honor-"

"Dean," Sam turned to him, stricken and working himself up to brave martyr mode, which was _not _going to happen. "Maybe it's best this way. I should have died a long time ago anyway and… and… I'd rather you don't- I don't want you to-"

"Oh, for god's sake, nobody's killing anybody today, ok? No one's dying and- and that's that."

"Don't worry, Sammy," Zachariah piped up, "my offer will stand as long as your brother behaves. Of course, I'm not always going to be available to deliver! In fact I'm going to be very busy starting now, but I'll keep an ear out for your call. I don't imagine you'll want to go through the withdrawal again, after all!"

"Just get me a weapon and put me in front of Lucifer already, instead of playing all these mind games! He's out and you want him dead: fine. You don't need to wait anymore now! I'll do it, just…"

Zach beamed again. "Nope. Now doesn't suit me."

Dean lost possession of all his common sense and swung out. Obviously, he missed. The angel vanished from in front of him and re-appeared, chuckling darkly, right behind him.

"You're lucky I've decided to go for a positive reinforcement approach with you, rather than- well, other methods. Keep your head down until we call you and try and not to get killed. And don't interfere: the tactics involved here are very complex and delicate, and I wouldn't appreciate you jeopardizing them by running around half-cocked and making yourself a target."

"And what about Castiel?"

"That's another matter where you'll do best by not interfering. But see, since I'm so generous today, I'll add him to the pile of your rewards. You do seem attached to that wretch, hmm? I suppose even you have some gratitude lurking under that surly demeanor. Maybe there's hope you'll understand just how much I've done for you one day, after all!"

Abruptly, the wind whipped around them like a twister and in the wake of it the angels where gone, leaving Sam and Dean alone for the first time in days.

They looked at each other for a moment, and then Dean walked right up to Sam and grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him. "I don't care what his highness the Supreme Dick says, they manipulated you six ways to Sunday and now they're not just sweeping you under the rug. We'll find a way to save you!"

"From demons? Or angels? Or myself? Or… or you?"

"Everything!" Dean whispered, the fight draining out of him. He knelt down on the dusty ground, dragging Sam down with him. "I'm not giving up on you, Sam. We're brothers and- we've gone through this shit already more times than any family has any right to. We'll do it again."

Sam looked at him levelly, weary and numb. In a carefully controlled voice, he asked: "So you've changed your mind? About what you said?"

"What, the don't- the dad thing? Yeah. Bobby said… you know, I'm not half the man dad was, but in some ways, I guess I don't want to be." He started chuckling, exhaustion and adrenaline in free-fall making him giddy. "I meant it when I said I owed you a serious beat down, but- I meant everything else too. I want to do this thing with you. I want my brother, and I want to be your brother, and- and- that's it. I don't care about the rest. And the demons and angels can go fuck each other in outer space for all it matters."

Sam was looking at him with a strange expression. "When- when did you say that, Dean?"

"Oh, while the angels had me hostage. I tried to send you a message, but I guess it didn't get through. Basically what I just said. Uh, you know, and that- jesus, I'm sorry about the 'don't come back' thing, ok? I didn't mean it."

"Dean, as that angel was so fond of reminding us, I freed Lucifer."

"Yeah, but I started it."

"More like Yellow Eyes did. Seriously, Dean: you're not- you're not mad?"

"Oh, I'm plenty mad. But it doesn't change anything. I guess there really is nothing you can do that would change it, so… You really didn't get my message? 'Cause I'd rather not have to repeat all that girly sharing and caring for a third time in twenty-four hours."

Sam smiled, and gave a sort of humorless snort. "No, I guess I really didn't get your message before, but- I do now. I won't make you repeat it. Me too, you know. Or, whatever."

"Oh, thank god," Dean exhaled, picking himself up and offering a hand to haul his brother to his feet. "Come on, let's reach Bobby. He's gotta be freaking out with the way I vanished yesterday. Or was it two day ago? I lost time in that freaking angel nightmare suite…"

"What are you talking about? What happened to you, and how did you find me?"

Dean looked at the horizon, where the sun had climbed and the day had started, and shook his head, heaving a sigh. "It's a long story. I'll tell you as we go."

ooooo

They reached Bobby's house in silence, having talked themselves out about what they'd been up to since they'd separated. Not that they'd actually provided many details, either of them, but they did manage to sketch a pretty thorough map of the situation they were in.

"Basically they've been screwing with us from the beginning, and now we're screwed, and they plan on screwing us further any chance they'll get," Dean told Bobby on his front porch, hands up and facing the double barrels of a shot-gun.

"Winchesters," Bobby sighed like a cuss word, "Can't you ever get into an _easy_ mess? Why does it always have to sound so damn hopeless?" He raised the shotgun and gestured them to follow him into the house.

"I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off ever since you vanished. Hunters everywhere keep calling, no one knows what is happening except that something big went down and it looks like every single demon and hell spawn around has gone to ground; hunts everywhere simply gone, just like that." He sat two shot glasses filled with holy water right in front of them.

Sam stared at his with the sort of emo look that threatened to spill into tears any moment, so Dean picked up his and spilled it on his brother's hand, rolling his eyes and ready with a good sarcastic comment when Sam yelped like he'd been scalded and jumped back, holding his hand in front of him. It wasn't smoking, but his reaction had been enough.

Bobby raised his shotgun right back up, Latin already rushing from his lips before he'd even cocked it and Dean had to jump between the two of them before the situation could get even worse. "He's NOT possessed, I swear! The angels got us back here, they sure as hell wouldn't have taken a demon without knowing! Look-" he took the remaining holy water and splashed it right in his own face, "I'm not possessed either! It's just the demon blood, it's- it's more than before and it's reacting or something, but he's still Sam! He's not a demon, Bobby, I swear!"

Sam scrambled right out of the house and out of sight. For the second time in almost as many minutes, Bobby Singer heaved a long-suffering sigh and lowered his weapon. "Hell, boys. Just…" he shook his head. "I'm taking out the Scotch now. I think we all need it," and with that he turned and left Dean alone.

Immediately he went to look for his brother, and found him sitting in the dirt about two feet from the porch steps. One of Bobby's dogs, an old half-blind biddy with a scar on her muzzle, had come to snuggle up to him, and Sam was absently petting her with long, heavy strokes. Only when Dean came to sit next to him did he see the big, fat tears running down his face.

"That angel was right," he finally said, starting with the loud sobs in earnest, "and it's only going to get worse. I'll go into withdrawal and if that doesn't kill me… what am I going to do, Dean? I can't even handle holy water! I'm not stepping into that house again, what if I react to a devil's trap too? Oh, god-" he stopped petting the dog and covered his face with both hands, making the animal whine at the loss of contact.

Dean punched him in the shoulder, so hard he almost knocked him down. "Shut up. This is only temporary. We'll find a way; besides, you can't trust a single thing that comes out of that dick Zachariah's mouth. We'll- we'll go find Cas, is what we'll do. I owe him that much and- and I bet he can help you. And anyway I don't like the idea of those bastards holding him up like some kind of prize for wagging my tail on command. And fercrisstsake, Sam! Pet that dog, can't you hear how pitiful it sounds?"

Sam actually started laughing through his tears at that, and bodily hauled the big whining beast into his lap, hugging it like a stuffed animal. "At least Abby's not afraid of me," he sniffed.

"'Course not. You're still Sammy. No reason to be afraid of you," Dean said decisively.

Bobby came out of his front door a moment later, carrying a bottle and three glasses. He sat on the dirt without saying anything, right next to Sam, and poured.

ooooo

They loaded the Impala with enough books to keep Sam occupied for a month and settled in a motel room as close to Bobby's as they could find. By a stubborn bout of masochism, Sam refused to research anything that could help himself, leaving that to the other two, and concentrated instead on researching what little angel lore they had: how to track them, how to hide from them, and how to kill them. None of them was having much luck with either task.

"Summoning," Dean insisted after the third fruitless day, "it worked the other time."

"Somehow I doubt the other angels are going to let it be so easy," Sam countered.

"They either have him prisoner or they beat him up and left him somewhere. At least we might get a clue," Bobby pronounced. "I'll get the supplies together. Find a secluded place, meet you there in three hours.

At sunset they congregated in an empty storehouse and Bobby did the spell. They ate a dinner of burgers and shakes, and spent most of the time flipping pages on a couple of books and generally chasing their tails. Around midnight they gave up.

"So either he can't or he won't come," Sam reflected in the car, afterwards. "Maybe we should try communicating instead of tracking. It should be easier."

Dean nodded absently, finger drumming on the steering wheel. He didn't want to say what he was really afraid of, namely that Cas had gotten hauled back to bible camp for a second time, and that not only were they left without any kind of ally, but that they might find themselves actually having to fight the poor brainwashed bastard once he showed up again.

"Damn, I wish Pamela was still around. She could have probably found him," Sam continued, oblivious to Dean's brooding.

"She probably would have chased us off with a shotgun if we asked her to do that," Dean replied, his brain segueing neatly on to Sam's usual source of information: Ruby. He flinched, hiding the motion by taking a turn a little more sharply than necessary. Sam hadn't mentioned her once since his confession, out in the fields, and Dean was perfectly happy never to hear her godforsaken name ever again.

But Sam didn't reminisce, at least not out loud. He snorted with affection at Pam's memory, and said: "finding another psychic willing to help us is going to be tough."

"If we had something of his we could try the African dream root… provided angels dream," he added.

"We should try a scrying ourselves. Not like we're swimming in better options anyway," Dean finally said. Sam agreed. They decided to try it the next day.

ooooo

This time they were so sure they were not going to get anywhere with it that they set up shop directly in the motel room. Bobby had scrounged up some stuff, including the original table cloth Pam had used that first time, which she had apparently 'given' to him. He didn't elaborate.

They lighted candles and burnt herbs and sat in a circle and held hands. Dean, being the one with the mark on his shoulder, was given the official role of chanting, which he did without complaint, despite feeling like an idiot.

This time, however, something did work.

The lights started flickering and a low breeze swept through the closed room. Dean grew quiet, eyes tightly shut, hands going slack in their grip. Sam opened his eyes and squeezed his fingers, encouraging him to continue, but he found himself facing the horror-stricken expression of his brother, and he felt a cold dread filling him up at the sight.

"Dean! What-?"

"What have you done?" Dean whispered in a low voice, looking between Sam and Bobby.

"What? Dean?" Sam repeated.

"You shouldn't have done this. LEAVE IMMEDIATELY!" Dean's shout ended in a strangled gasp. The television in the corner imploded, and Dean slumped back in his chair, before slowly tilting to the side and towards the floor. Bobby, who was nearer, barely managed to control his fall. Sam leaped out of his chair and went to kneel next to his brother.

Dean's eyes were open, glassy and unfocused. He was twitching, taking tiny gasping breaths, and at first he didn't seem aware of his surroundings; Bobby grabbed his jaw and dug his fingers in, eliciting a long, drawn out groan. Sam grabbed a half empty water bottle and upended it directly on Dean's face, which set him blinking, and finally he looked at them with a measure of lucidity.

"Hey," Sam called with relief, "Dean. How you feeling?"

Dean frowned, then grimaced. "What happened?" He asked, voice weak and whining. He was still twitching, his breath hitching each time, and he flopped his arms around, trying to curl up on his side. He seemed drugged, not completely awake, like he'd just come out of major anesthesia.

"Take it easy, boy," Bobby shushed him, holding him down on his back.

Dean grimaced again, trying to shrug off the hands holding him; he raised his hand and grabbed his left shoulder with a whimper, like it was paining him. Sam checked the pulse on his neck, finding it rabbit fast and the temperature elevated. He trailed his fingers up his brother's face, wiping droplets of water along the way, and smoothing back the short hair from his forehead.

"Let's get him on the bed," Bobby encouraged Sam, who nodded and positioned himself behind Dean's head to slip his arms under the shoulders. Dean groaned when the left one was jostled, trying again to curl up into it. "Sto-op…" he whined, "lemme lie here a bi-"

"You can lie on the bed, it'll feel better," Sam told him, angling for a better grip.

"Nnngh," Dean protested, clamping his eyes and his jaw shut. Sam and Bobby nodded at each other and hauled him up. Dean immediately jackknifed, twisting desperately to the side, and threw up on the foot of the bed.

They let him lie a bit longer on the floor.

ooooo

A/n: Chapter two will be up tomorrow


	2. Chapter 2

RATING: R gen, pre-slash Dean/Castiel  
SPOILERS: For the Season 4 finale, and not beyond  
CHARACTERS: Sam, Dean, Bobby, Castiel, Zacharia  
SUMMARY: Post 4.22. What might have happened after the "to be continued" whiteout. With extra helpings of h/c.

Disclaimer: Supernatural is owned by it's creator Kripke and the CW network, and I am in no way affiliated with them.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic is complete, and will be posted one chapter a day. Muchas gracias to Starrylizard for betaing the whole thing!

* * *

"I'm dreaming, aren't I?"

A rhetorical question, if ever there was one. He _knows_ he's dreaming. He almost woke up a little before, felt the reassuring rumble of the Impala surrounding him, snuggled a little further in his jacket and came right back to the smoky room with the pristine pool table, and the person leaning in front of it.

His father smirked, knowing he didn't have to answer, and kept looking at him. John Winchester looked good- healthy and as happy and relaxed as he ever got after a successful hunt- but didn't speak. Dean was acutely aware that this wasn't his father, not really, just a figment of his imagination, and felt the loss with renewed acuity.

"You're not really here," he said out loud, because apparently this dream consisted entirely of obviousness. Not-really-dad shook his head, still grinning, this time a little wistfully.

"I miss you," he continued, since this was a dream and there'd be no consequences to being a little sappy. Not-really-dad nodded to indicate that yes, he understood perfectly. Dean kinda wanted to go up and give him a hug, but somehow he couldn't.

This dream needs to move along, he thought, and two women stepped out of the shadows and went to twine their arms with not-dad. He smiled wolfishly, tightening his hold on them with clear satisfaction, and they smiled back. The women (one a brunette and the other a red-head) were decked out in pseudo-karate mini outfits, sleeveless and pant-less, but with two authentic and embroidered black belts.

Dean knew, because it was his dream, that they were legit. They could kick his and his not-dad's ass with one hand behind their backs. But he didn't really feel like letting the dream take that road, so he said "You go on without me, I'll hustle up some money," and the three of them melted back into the shadows.

"So, are we going to play or what?" His mark appeared at the other end of the table, already flustered and clumsily chalking his cue. He was chewing on a bent, unlit cigarette. It was Castiel.

"You're not really him," Dean felt the need to clarify, and not-Castiel rolled his eyes and huffed.

"Of course I'm not. You're the one making all this up. Like Castiel would ever play pool," he drawled, grinning at Dean.

"Cas wouldn't smoke," Dean countered, a little annoyed.

"Lungs are overrated anyway." Not-Castiel shrugged, but took the cigarette and tucked it in one of the pockets of his coat.

Dean looked down at the table, where the balls were waiting, spread out everywhere. Not-Castiel didn't know how to play, he realized suddenly, grabbing the triangle and racking them up under the nakedly curious stare of the other. "He might," Dean said, meaning the game, because really, why not?

"Yeah, in your dreams," not-Castiel dead-panned, blank-faced as his real counterpart. He held the cue up with both hands, like he was presenting a sword, and looked at the balls. They broke without a touch, and the black one started to hit the others, nudging them without fail to the holes. The table cleared quickly without either of them touching cue to ball. Not-Castiel looked up at Dean, proud as a little kid waiting for a gold star for his perfect spelling bee.

"That's cheating," Dean said gently, feeling like a heel but getting annoyed. How else was he gonna hustle the money he'd promised his dad if they couldn't play? Not-Castiel's face fell, and he dropped his cue on the table. I don't like this dream either, Dean thought.

"What else would you have me do?" Not-Castiel whispered, looking sad and confused.

Dean marched right up to him, spun him around and pinned him to the pool table with his body, standing chest-to-chest.

"No consequences," Dean reminded both of them. Not-Castiel grinned with delight, scrunching his nose in a way that Dean had never seen either him or Jimmy Novak do, and leant forward for a kiss.

The dream did a sort of fade-to-black, let's-pan-to-the-window-with-the-tweety-birds on him then, but he was aware that, however abstract his mind had decided to make it, he was still getting some action.

That is, until a harsh whisper interrupted them, calling "Dean!".

Dean stepped back from not-Castiel, who was looking at him like they'd just shared a really funny private joke, and turned around to face Castiel, the real, bone-fide angel in the dream-flesh.

"This- this isn't what it looks like," Dean stammered, feeling exactly as if he'd been caught by a jealous boyfriend frisking up his woman.

But Castiel didn't look at him, and didn't even change expression. He was staring ahead blankly, head slightly cocked, looking his usual unperturbed self.

"You needn't worry, Dean. I know the human subconscious communicates in a symbolic manner, and anyway it's your dream, not one I've created. I'm not really here."

Dean stepped up to this new Castiel, and passed a hand in front of unblinking, unseeing eyes. "But you _are_ Cas... the real one."

"Yes."

"Where are you, man? We've been looking for you! Sam needs help, and that dick Zachariah said-"

"I'm trapped," Castiel hissed, voice rough but tone calm and self-assured, "I've been trying to reach you to give you a message, but it's difficult. I'm under constant surveillance. And I can't stay long."

Dean looked at him for a moment, then turned slightly and looked at the other Castiel, who was busying himself with racking the balls again. "I have a feeling this isn't the first time you've done this."

"No. It's frustrating, you seem to keep forgetting once you wake up, but there's no other way to go undetected. Please, Dean, try and remember this time: _don't come for me_. It's a trap. The moment you free me they'll catch us."

"Who? What-? We can't just leave you wherever it is you are! We need you, we need your help!"

"I know. I'm working on freeing myself, but it's going to take time. Please cease this search of yours. I _do not_ need rescuing and it is dangerous to both you and your brother."

Dean wanted to protest, but the sudden sight of blood gushing through Castiel's white shirt made him take a step back in alarm. His first instinct was to try and staunch the flow, but something was keeping him from touching the real Castiel.

"I'm still bound," Castiel said cryptically, showing no reaction to the blood, which started to pool at his feet, alarmingly thick.

And then Dean was hurtling forward and smashing his face on the dashboard.

"Dean! Shit, I'm sorry, that stupid cat just ran out in front of me..." Sam grabbed him by the shoulder and tugged him back in the seat. They were in the Impala. Dean had been dozing, Sam driving. Outside, sitting on the tarmac like it didn't have a care in the world, a black cat was busy cleaning its paws.

"You ok, man? Hey..." Sam jostled him, and Dean slapped his hand back before he could start poking at his face. "'M fine," he mumbled, rubbing his forehead. He'd been lucky enough to execute a proper headbutt on the dashboard rather than hitting nose-first. Sore? Bruised? Yeah. Broken? Nothing.

"Sorry for interrupting... sounded a like a good dream," Sam said mock-serious, starting the car again. Dean blinked muzzily at him, ready to bitch something right back, but the sight of the slight tremor in Sam's hand sobered him. It was barely there, and it stopped as soon as Sam clenched his fingers on the steering wheel, but if he was already getting these kinds of symptoms who knew how much time they had? They really needed to step up their game and find-

"Sonofabitch!" Dean yelled, making Sam swerve and yell back "What??"

"Cas... I saw Cas. I was dreaming and he came." The unintentional double entendre made him realize suddenly exactly _what_ Castiel had interrupted with his warning. Dean shuddered so hard his teeth rattled. It was bad enough that he was having weird homoerotic dreams with pieces of his imagination shaped liked Castiel –shaped like Jimmy Novak, ferchristssake! And not even having good sex, just that confusing, insert-happy-fun-times-here bit that possibly involved plenty of groping and rutting, but no other dick besides his own, which... he didn't know whether he should find that reassuring or be even more weirded out. Apparently his subconscious was just plain incapable of coming up with verisimilar gay-sex. Which was fine by him, obviously.

But having said dreams with the angel himself present? Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Dean Winchester had just reached an all-new, spectacular low.

"I am _so_ going to hell," Dean groaned, burying his face in his hands.

"Why? What did Castiel say? Wait- you mean he walked in on you having a... you were! You were making all these happy little grunts! Oh, god, what was his face like? It must have been priceless..." Sam started laughing and slapping the wheel like an old black and white cartoon character.

Dean flashed on not-Castiel's wicked little grin, looking at him from under his eyelashes and tugging him closer by the belt loops in his jeans, and burst out laughing as well, more out of nerves than anything. They both went on until they had tears in their eyes and Sam started hiccupping. It had been a long time since they'd laughed like that. Maybe –_maybe_- the utterly mortifying dream had been worth it.

oooo

The one thing they agreed on after discussing Castiel's message was that they needed better protection. They didn't have any of Ruby's hex bags left, and the fact that even bound and trapped Castiel had been able to walk into Dean's dream –several of them, apparently, and wasn't _that_ a comforting thought- meant that they were way too open to attacks from the angels.

Bobby either didn't know or didn't manage to find anyone willing to help, but he heard that Jo knew someone. Ellen managed to get her to cough up the contact, but not before strongly suggesting to the both of them that they should never show their hide again if anything happened to this friend of Jo's. Actually, she worded it with "castrate" and "bowie knife", but the message was clear.

It was a two day's drive away by normal standards. They took turns at the wheel and got there on the morning of the second day. "There" being an imposing, three-storied house with a big untidy lawn, set back on a residential street lined with trees. The house itself had seen better times: shingles needed replacing, the paint needed a new coat, and the mosquito net on the veranda was hanging in tatters. Most of the houses they had passed coming down the street looked empty and in similar stages of disrepair. An old, beat-to-hell Volkswagen minivan with peeling orange decal flowers was the only car parked in the vicinity.

They mounted the steps wordlessly, weary from the long trip and unsure of what they'd find. Ellen had said that it was a duo, a witch and a psychic working together. Dean wasn't too thrilled with the idea of asking help from the former, even knowing she didn't practice demonic-powered magic.

They knocked on the door. Presently a young woman, in her early twenties, answered. Sam and Dean stared. She stared back. She was wearing fake pointy ears and a white medieval-style fantasy dress, with a laced up bodice, long flaring sleeves and buckles everywhere.

"I think maybe we got the wrong house," Dean said, eyes like dinner plates.

"Then you probably did," the woman said shortly, already closing the door in their faces.

Sam placed his boot in the threshold and stopped her. "We, er, 'we're looking for a level ten mage'," he said slowly.

The woman blinked, expression clouding over. "Suck my elfin ass, you goblin."

Sam hesitated. "Humm, I don't think Ellen told me the next safe word."

"Look," Dean interjected, maneuvering himself between the two of them. "We're friends of Jo Harvelle's. We just need some protection, of the juiced up kind."

"And I'm late for the Ren Fair as it is, and _that's_ where I make most of my income-"

"We'll pay," Sam blurted out immediately.

"Well, I ain't certainly giving you anything out of the goodness of my heart. You want protection, you pay for it. Unfortunately for you, it's my mom you want for these kinds of things, and she's not here."

"This is kinda urgent, so if you could give her a call, we'd really appreciate it." Dean attempted his most ingratiating smile, though he was tired and getting pissed and it turned out pretty strained.

"And as I was saying, she's _not here_ as in 'she's not in the US of A' right now. She'll be back sometime around the autumn equinox, but getting a precise date is difficult since she hitchhikes and she doesn't carry a cell phone."

"What??"

"_The person you're looking for is currently somewhere in South America_, ok? Probably in Honduras, since it's still spring. She usually hits the Texas border sometime in early September. Look, I'm sorry but I can't help you, and it's getting late and I'd like to get to the fair in time for the fancy costume competition. This year the winner gets an all-expense trip to Niagara Falls."

"Miss, please! You've got to have something in storage... for emergencies. Please. If ever there was an emergency, this is it." Sam used his most beseeching tone, looking at her as if... well, as if she held the key to his salvation. "Life or death. And not just ours, but many, many other's as well."

She hesitated, the pleading and their desperation finally making her waver. "I could... I can do little, you understand. It's my mother who... oh, all right. Niagara Falls is for honeymooners anyway."

She backed away from the door, leaving it open but without bidding them to follow her. They entered anyway. The hallway was cluttered with bulging bags, half of them modern and half of them made of rough hemp, but aside from that the decor looked rather middle class and mundane.

"I'm Dharma, by the way," she said, picking her way around the bags carefully to avoid snagging her full length skirts. "Don't," she exclaimed, whirling around and holding up a finger, "make a "Dharma & Greg joke." Sam shook his head innocently, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Dean snapping his mouth shut.

"What kind of protection were you looking for? I have charms... against possession, against spell work, against curses, to combat seelie and unseelie glamour..." She went into a sizable living room and opened a cupboard, taking out three cardboard boxes that seemed to weigh quite a bit for their size. From the closed lid of the top one Hello Kitty winked at Dean.

"Uh, no... we had a- we had some hex bags that would protect us from being tracked by anything. And I mean _anything_," Sam explained, keeping a weary eye on an enormous dream catcher that was swinging from the ceiling in lieu of a chandelier. There were three naked lightbulbs hanging under it, and the whole thing was about three feet wide.

Dharma noticed him looking and rolled her eyes. "I made that when I was eight and my mom insisted on hanging it there for all the world to see. I swear, one of these years I'm going bartering at Burning Man and getting rid of it. As for hex bags, I don't do hex bags, and neither does my mom. That's nasty shit you're describing. I don't know what kind of witches you've been consorting with, but that sounds like the opposite side of the color spectrum from us."

The Winchesters didn't budge an inch. She sighed, and started to rifle through the Hello Kitty box. "Look, if they try a locating spell on you this will scramble it. Other than that..." she held up a burnt copper charm on a leather strap, "it comes at twenty bucks, and it also covers you from unwanted voices and influences. I can put it in a cloth baggie if it makes you feel more comfortable."

Dean grimaced and shook his head. "We, huh, need communications open, I guess. It's our location we need to shield."

"Could _you_ do a locating spell _for_ us?" Sam asked suddenly, determined and focused.

Dharma got uncomfortable under his scrutiny. She lowered her eyes and started to tidy up the boxes. "No, I told you, it's my mom that does those things. I only-"

"You're the psychic though, aren't you? A scrying would do just as well," Sam insisted.

"I don't think... my mom might help you but she's not here and I really have to get to the fair now. All I've got here are the charms, and if you don't want those then I think you should leave."

"Dharma, please," said Dean, stopping Sam with a hand on his arm before he could continue. "If you can't do the bags that's ok, that's just for us and we'll manage. We've done without plenty of times before. But we need to find a friend of ours... he's in serious trouble, and he got in it to help me, and I can't just leave him to deal with it on his own, you know?" She fidgeted, listening but not overtly agreeing.

"He told me he can deal with it, and I know he can, but... if your mom got in trouble, powerful witch an all, you'd still want to help her, right?"

Dharma nodded, shooting glances at both of them, and then sighed. She turned around and headed to the kitchen, gesturing them to follow her. It was a spacious, sunny room where herbs hung up to dry from every nook and cranny. She took a non-stick pan from a stack inside the oven and filled it with water. "You have anything of his with you? That might help." She got a bottle of olive oil and dropped a shot of it in the water, where it separated into tiny drops that started to jump and spit like it was scorching hot.

Dean shifted in place, fingers resolutely not going for his shoulder. "No," he said. Sam shot him a look, but Dean shook his head behind Dharma's back. The situation was reminding him too much of what had happened with Pam, and just days before with him; he didn't want to repeat the same mistakes. Besides, if they couldn't get any results he could always show her the scar later. Not to mention that he was afraid of freaking her out.

"Ok," she shrugged, opening a drawer in the table and taking out a wooden spoon and two globs of clear glass. "Here, hold these for a sec," she handed the first glass sphere to Dean who held it up to the light curiously. It looked like nothing more than a dollop of blown glass that had been left to congeal without giving it much of a shape. But the moment she gave the second one to Sam he let out a pained yell and dropped it, shaking his hands like he'd been scalded.

Everything happened fast after that. Dharma simply turned her back and dove for the back door, but it was bolted: she had, after all, been about to leave the house. Dean, momentarily stunned, shook himself and grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms down. In the brief scuffle that followed her fake pointy ears fell off. She took a ragged breath and let out a panicked, strangled yelp, but before she could work her way up to a full blown scream Dean covered her mouth with her hand. She bit him, but he held fast.

"Sam! You all right? -Stop struggling, we're not going to hurt you!- Sam!"

Sam had stuck his hands under the running faucet. He turned around, tight-lipped with pain, but nodded. Dharma had started sobbing. She kept trying to shake Dean off, with less and less force, tears and snot running down her face and on his hand.

"I'll let you go now if you promise not to scream, ok?"

She nodded, growing perfectly still. Cautiously, Dean lifted his hand but kept her arms pinned.

She took a couple of ragged breaths, then whispered harshly: "Demon!" and continued to gasp it under her breath.

Dean groaned, and Sam spun quickly on his heel, turning his face so they couldn't see it. "He's not a demon! He's just- he's cursed, ok? That's why he responds to anti-demonic stuff, I swear to you. That's... that's why we need to be untrackable and why we're looking for this friend... he can help, and... he's really not possessed. Dharma, please, calm down. We're sorry we scared you, but nothing's going to happen, really." And to prove his point he let her go completely.

She snagged a paper towel and cleaned her face, smearing her make-up around, and then lifted her chin and went to retrieve the glass thing Sam had dropped. It didn't have as much as a spider crack. She looked at it thoughtfully, then peered at Dean again. "All right, I believe you," she said finally.

She turned to Sam and started to say something else, but when he met her eye she shuddered and turned to Dean again. "I can... I can't make you untrackable, as you say, but I can make it so demons can't pinpoint your position. It only works if you're around other people. It's sort of... like spreading your signal... on all the others around. That's... that's the best I can do."

Dean closed his eyes, heaving a sigh of relief, and nodded. Sam piped up from the back, saying "that's wonderful, Dharma, we really appreciate it," but she didn't turn to him, getting busy instead with herbs and water. "It comes in vials," she continued, pulling out several small bottles, "you uncork one and let the fumes out. Works once per vial."

"That's- that's a lot of 'vials' to carry around," Dean tried to joked, but it fell flat.

"So you _are_ a witch," Sam said after a moment of silence. Dharma shrugged, not meeting their eyes.

"I know how to follow the instructions," she admitted, pulling out what at first glance looked like a Betty Crocker cookbook, but when she flipped it open the pages were all handwritten. "And I know how to prepare the base. It's pretty mundane, really, once you have the ingredients. I'll... I'll copy you the directions, and you can..." she trailed off, working diligently with her head down.

Dean jerked his head at Sam, and together they stepped back into the doorway. Dean examined Sam's palms, but they looked perfectly fine. "She's lying, you know," Sam whispered.

"She's freaked out. And I don't think she's trying to screw us with the 'vials'... huh, sounds kinda like those smoke bombs ninjas use. Pretty cool."

"I'm not talking about that, Dean. She keeps trying to minimize what she is capable of doing. First she can't help us, now this comes up. Notice how she's sidestepped the scrying altogether. We _need_ Castiel's location, or this is useless-"

"I know, I know! Geez, you're like a broken record." Sam gave him a pointed look, so Dean rolled his eyes and addressed the woman again. "So, about finding our friend..."

She dropped the spoon she was using in the pot, cursed loudly, and had to fish for it with a ladle.

"Can you set up the scrying while that boils? We're in a hurry. And we don't want to keep you from your fair more than necessary," Sam added.

She finally stopped and looked up at them. "It's just that... I can't do it with you right here," she gestured vaguely at Sam.

"That's- that's ok, I'll... wait in the car."

Dharma heaved an exasperated sigh. "You guys aren't much for hints, are you? I don't- I can't- I'm not comfortable getting mixed up with something that can curse a human to, to-" She pointed at Sam more decisively, eyes on the floor and blushing slightly.

Dean grimaced, but before he could come up with any kind of rousing speech Sam had forged ahead. "No demon is going to know about this, I promise you. You'll be perfectly safe. This friend of ours is _not_ on the demons' radar, finding him won't get you into trouble."

Dean gaped at Sam but restrained himself from calling him on his bullshit in front of her. "We- we just need a general location. You don't even have to look too close," he finally stammered.

Dharma bit her lip. It was clear that she was relenting. "We won't ask anything else of you, Dharma. We'll be out of your life and you can pretend like you've never even met us afterwards," Sam promised softly.

"I," she said, adding the final ingredients to her concoction, "this needs to simmer for a while, and... yeah, I can do a general location, I guess. The thing is, I really need something of his, otherwise it's useless even trying."

"Don't worry, we have something," Sam encouraged, bumping Dean with his shoulder. Dharma blanched. "Oh. Ok, then," she said feebly. She kept stirring her pot for a bit, then steeled herself and motioned for Dean to follow her back into the living room. Sam stayed in the doorway, giving them space.

She got out a big atlas, and opened it at random, then took a pen and sat down. "I need to touch his property," she said, looking straight at Dean and holding her free hand out. Dean found himself having a flashback, telling a pre-teen Sam that girls expected a thimble before a first kiss, like in Peter Pan, and that knowing this would totally get him to lock lips with that blue-eyed girl he dogged at recess.

Back in the present Sam cleared his throat, mercifully letting the 'property' joke go. Dean opened his shirt and then took Dharma's hand into his own, guided it up the sleeve of his undershirt and over his scar. "Don't look too closely," he said quietly.

Dharma looked at him askance, but nodded and produced a tiny bottle from a wooden box on the coffee table. It looked like smelling salts. In fact she took a good, long whiff of its contents, and then dropped her head, gripping Dean's shoulder tighter and tighter until he covered her hand with his own over the fabric, afraid that she was going to rip a chunk out. Suddenly she threw her head back, eyes rolling.

"What's the name of the one you seek?" She asked in a low voice.

"Castiel," Dean replied, growing uncomfortable.

"Castiel," she mumbled, scrabbling with her hand to grab the pen, "Castiel... Cas-ti-el... Cas-ti-el," she started flipping pages without looking down, head swaying, "Cas-ti-el is hidden." She announced.

"Yeah... that's why we need you to find him," Dean replied cautiously.

"You have a bond with him," she continued, hand clenching spasmodically. "Will he answer to your call? What is your call?" She demanded.

"Cas. I call him Cas," Dean heard himself answer, though he could have sworn he didn't know what she was talking about.

"Cas," she repeated, "_Cas,_ Cas..." She started chanting the name, flipping pages furiously until she stopped at a detailed page of western Ohio. She put the pen down, and started tracing circles around the whole page, slowly tightening them into a spiral, her chanting growing frantic.

Dean was watching the map closely. She was tightening in on Kripke's Hollow, but then she crossed it out and started to go for a space right to the north of it. It was getting narrower, and narrower... "Cas-ti-el?" She enquired suddenly, breaking her chanting. "Are you there?"

Without a moment's hesitation, Dean slammed the atlas closed and pulled her hand off his shoulder. She gasped, her trance broken, and fell back in her chair panting.

"Not far from Chuck Shirley's place," Dean told Sam. "Hey, you ok?" He asked her, touching her shoulder lightly.

She started, grabbing her wrist. "You hurt me," she accused, looking at him angrily. Dean was about to refute that when she continued, gaining strength and volume, "And you lied to me! _What _is your 'friend'? Because _that _wasn't a human being." She leapt up and yanked Dean's shirt back, exposing the handprint scar. "What-? What does that?? You- I. I'm not safe anymore, am I? You lied. I looked, and now I'm not safe here anymore."

The Winchesters didn't answer her. She closed her eyes, hot tears of rage starting to run down her cheeks. "It's not fair. You lied and I helped you and now... I can't go to the fair, can I? If they come looking for me, that's- everyone knows I'm going there, I always go, they expect me there."

"Maybe it would be best if this year you joined your mom down in South America," Sam advised.

Dharma heaved a broken sob, and stormed back into the kitchen. Dean followed her.

"We, huh, we can help you load your van if you want? I can get a look at the engine, if you're-"

"NO!" She almost shouted, searching furiously in her pantry. "You are not 'helping' me with anything, thank you very much. And I don't want your money!" She pointed at Sam, who had appeared at the door with a few bills already in hand. "You are going away now without giving me anything of yours. You are going away in my debt. You owe me, you owe me big time!" She snagged another paper towel and blew her nose, then tore a page from her note book and slammed it in Dean's chest along with a small filled bottle. "Here's the instructions for the potion. You can make your own, that one's for me, I think," she motioned towards her pot, still simmering. "And this one's on the house. Now get out and never come back."

Dean allowed her to physically push him through the hallway and out of the front door, which she slammed in their faces.

The brothers looked at each other. Plenty of things sprung to both their minds, but Sam just said "Ohio?" and Dean just shook his head and headed for the Impala.

* * *

chapter three will be up tomorrow


	3. Chapter 3

RATING: R gen, pre-slash Dean/Castiel

SPOILERS: For the Season 4 finale, and not beyond

CHARACTERS: Sam, Dean, Bobby, Castiel, Zacharia  
SUMMARY: Post 4.22. What might have happened after the "to be continued" whiteout. With extra helpings of h/c.

WARNING: Graphic violence

Disclaimer: Supernatural is owned by it's creator Kripke and the CW network, and I am in no way affiliated with them.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic is complete, and will be posted one chapter a day. Muchas gracias to Starrylizard for betaing the whole thing!

* * *

It took them another two and a half days to reach Chuck's place, which they found eerily intact, albeit completely empty. Not only of holy prophets and renegade angels, but of all of Chuck's writings and his material possessions. There was a "for sale" sign in the shabby lawn, but the real estate agent turned out to be non-existent. Dean and Sam stayed there only as long as they had to.

The space Dharma had indicated on the map was beyond the river and it housed about eighteen farmhouses, with their fields, woods, and assorted unmarked sheds and animal shelters. Of these, twelve properties where abandoned, one was owned by a very old lady who never stirred out of her house, and the rest were active farms, though of course the open spaces were not under constant surveillance. The Winchesters hoped Castiel was hidden in one of the abandoned houses, because otherwise… well, an abandoned house sounded most logical, so that's where they started.

They hit pay-dirt in the third house they checked, a three-storied mansion that had never even been finished before the owners flocked to greener pastures. The windows were boarded up, but the door was open. Sam went in first, taking the left side of the house. Dean went right. One room over and he spied Castiel through the doorway of a huge, round-looking room.

Dean stopped and gaped for a few moments: it was a breathtaking sight, even to someone who had seen as much as him. Castiel seemed to be asleep, or in stasis or something, floating weightless in the center of the room, about four feet above the ground. His coat and his tie billowed around him as though he were in zero-gravity, or at the bottom of the ocean, but he was perfectly still. The most amazing thing, though, were the wings. Huge, bigger even than what the shadows he'd once seen suggested. They hung, half unfurled, from his back, spanning the whole room. The sunlight poured golden and warm from two French window, highlighting a myriad of dust motes in the unmoving air.

Dean realized he had failed to call Sam only when his brother came to stand next to him and gasped at the sight. They exchanged a look, too much in awe despite themselves to go beyond the threshold. Then Sam took a sharp breath and grabbed Dean by the arm, shaking him. "It's an illusion," he whispered. Dean shook his head, uncomprehending. "Look at the light… it's sunset now, and those windows are facing east. Besides, all the windows at ground level are boarded up. We saw that when we checked the perimeter, remember?"

Dean shook himself. He did remember. Suddenly the sight that had seemed so peaceful and otherworldly became creepy and ominous. "So the question is: is he really there or what?"

"He did warn you about a trap…"

They exchanged glances. The smart thing to do would have been to turn tail and run.

They looked inside the room again. The image, though fake, was perfect. The feathers rippled in the sunlight and the hair swayed gently as though ruffled by a breeze. But they didn't have a choice, did they? After coming all the way here, they couldn't just leave.

Dean motioned for Sam to stand back and cover him. He took a deep breath, steeled himself, took out his knife and entered. It was like stepping into another world: the thing that immediately hit him was the stench of old blood, even though the sight was certainly more striking.

Castiel's feet were still dangling about four feet from the ground, but now it was because he was chained by his wrists to a hook in the ceiling, like a piece of meat. Blood sigils covered every inch of the room, glinting ominously as though still fresh. Castiel himself looked dead, eyes closed and head slumped forward, but he didn't seem to have a single mark on him. The wings, which had appeared so real in the illusion, were nowhere to be seen. Dean did a quick sweep of the room, but there was nothing else there. He could see Sam hovering beyond the doorway, looking frantically in and hopping from foot to foot.

"Dean?" he called, "are you still there?"

Dean stepped back out, making his brother jump. "The illusion covered you," Sam explained. "So? What's really there?"

Dean turned. The illusion was still going from this side of the doorway. "He's in there all right. Come on."

They both entered. Sam tensed up when he saw the real room, but didn't comment, only nodded twice, sharply, and then started checking the symbols around them. Dean instead went directly for Cas, mouth turned down and expression grim. When he got near enough he saw that his eyes weren't closed, they were actually half open and glassy, pupils so contracted that it was even difficult to see them; it looked like he only had the blue irises.

He also wasn't breathing.

Dean allowed himself a moment for his anger, even though there was nothing to kick or punch and he had to settle on clenching his fists so tight they shook. The angels had done this to Cas, then lied to Dean… or not? Could it be just a decoy? Nobody had come yet, and they hadn't been smote from up high either…

"Sam, help me take him down…" He called, sheathing his knife and wrapping his arms around Castiel's thighs, lifting as much as he could. Fortunately for them it was a simple hook with a simple iron chain, and once it wasn't pulled taught by the weight of the body, Sam managed to shake it free.

The brothers eased down the body, and laid him on the floor. The limbs were stiff, and the arms wouldn't bend back down. He'd been chained up with his palms facing out, which had to have put enormous strain on the shoulders. The head lolled to the side like a doll's. And it was quite clear that the body was legit.

"Poor bastard," Dean said with feeling. He put his hand on the unmoving chest, a desolate sense of sadness washing over him.

"He did what he thought was right," Sam whispered, sounding bitter. He reached out and pressed his palm over the eyes, closing the lids. "You do realize that this was a trap for you, just like he warned us? Zachariah could have taken you here any time, showed you that image, told you that Cas was in here, then whisk you away before you could take a closer look. He wouldn't even have had to lie."

Dean nodded. "Just 'omit a few pertinent details'. Yeah, wouldn't be the first time." He stared at Castiel's slack features, the lips slightly parted, when the eyelids fell back again, halfway, and he spied the pupils. They weren't pin-points any more, but had dilated unevenly: one eye was almost fully open and the pupil looked normal, while the other was still mostly closed and nearer it's former appearance.

Dean stood very still. "What if he's still in there? What if he's still alive?"

Sam looked doubtful. "He's not breathing, and there's no pulse. Although, angel- I have no idea." He looked around the room, warming to the notion. "We could try and carry him out or here," he proposed, getting to his feet.

Dean remained down, sitting on his haunches. "Lungs are overrated anyway," he mumbled, confusing Sam. Then he shook his head. "We can't pull him out if we don't know what kind of magic we're dealing with, with all these sigils…" he blinked, something nagging him at the back of his mind, like some nugget of memory he'd forgotten, but not completely.

He flashed back to his dream, but not the part with the real Cas, the part where he had started to slowly unbutton the white shirt of the fake Cas, running his hands on the skin underneath. It hadn't been smooth, but distinctly scarred. His fingers twitched. He tried to wrestle his thoughts to the matter at hand, and remembered the blood seeping from the real Cas… "He's bound- Sam, he's still bound," he said suddenly, grabbing a hold of the shirt and yanking it out of the pants.

"What the-?" Sam knelt right back down. For a moment, Dean didn't move any further, then he brushed the tie to the side and unbuttoned the shirt from the bottom up, and sat back, simply staring.

"Is that a tattoo??" Sam went on, poking gingerly at the exposed flesh. On Castiel's stomach, centering around his navel and spanning all the way up to the edge of his ribs and down to his groin, there was a black circle filled with symbols, set in a spiral. "Oh my god, it's charred! Dean, they fire-branded him!"

All Dean could do was gape silently while Sam worked himself into a frenzy. He hadn't known it was going to be there, not really, but at the same time he'd felt almost compelled- just _what_ had Castiel showed him in all those dreams he couldn't remember?

"We have to break it, it must be what's keeping him unconscious… I think we have enough to make a flame-thrower in the trunk, but I'm not so sure about what we can heat up… Do we still have the iron pokers? We'll also need something to handle them with-"

"I'll do it," Dean said quietly, halting his brother with a hand to the shoulder. "Go out to the car and start the engine. Keep a look out for any incoming archangels." He took out his knife again, looking intently at the body lying next to him.

Sam blinked, taken aback. "Dean, I'm not leaving you here on your own," he stated.

"We don't know what's going to happen, and we can't afford to get caught with our pants down, and-" he lowered his eyes, training them on his knife, "and… I just- I should do it. This."

Dean wouldn't meet Sam's gaze. He kept his attention on the blade, scraping his thumb on the edge to test it even though he knew perfectly well that it had been sharpened and greased since the last time he'd used it, when he'd killed Ruby. He'd done it all personally.

After a moment Sam uttered a quiet 'ok' and went out, leaving them alone.

Dean heaved a sigh, then turned and faced the vacant stare of what, for all intents and purposes, seemed a lifeless corpse. Despite it all, he had the distinct feeling that Cas was watching him from inside there.

"Dude, I really hope this is right. If not… well, sorry."

He considered straddling Cas's thighs but he felt uncomfortable doing that, so he compromised by setting only one knee between the legs, and hefted his knife. This was something he'd done hundreds of times on souls, but he couldn't say that he'd tried quite the same thing on a real body. He examined the marks closely, noticing how uneven they looked: some lines were as thick as his fingers, while others appeared to have healed somewhat and were as fine as if drawn with a pen. All of them were unbroken, as far as he could tell.

With a steady hand he began to cut from the bottom, the skin parting easily under the touch of his blade, and bleeding sluggishly. He only broke the first line of the outer circle, then stopped to see if there was any effect. No fiery wrath of heaven rained down from the sky; on the other hand he could almost swear that those half-open eyes were now trained on him.

He checked the wound, prodding with far less gentleness than he would have with another human being, but not nearly as roughly as he had with the countless souls that had passed through his ministrations. The cut was precise and neat, though not deep enough to penetrate through all of the burned flesh.

He positioned the knife again and slowly pushed the blade deeper, until he was certain that it had gone down sufficiently. Castiel- the body didn't react. With mild frustration and plenty determination he grabbed hold of the hilt two-handed and sliced up, pushing all his weight behind it and making it all the way through the first symbol of the spiral.

To his utter delight and relief, Castiel gasped in a shuddering breath, and proceeded to continue to gulp in air. Dean immediately leaned forward and slapped him lightly on the cheek, calling his name. The angel didn't reply, but when Dean angled his face and peered into his eyes he saw them focusing on him.

"Hey, there," Dean smiled. Cas blinked slowly, staring at Dean expectantly. "Right. Still bound, eh? Ok…" He leaned back and gripped the knife again, this time holding the angel's gaze. He pushed the blade forward until it was half-way through the circle, when suddenly Castiel gave a louder gasp, his whole body spasming and his back arching clear off the floor. Dean let go, alarmed, and tried to hold him still, but with a powerful jerking motion Castiel raised his arms, dragging the chain behind, and then brought them back down gracelessly on Dean's back. For a moment Dean thought the angel was trying to hit him, then that he was trying to hug him, and then Cas managed to wrestle his uncooperative limbs down to his chest in an attempt to grab the hilt of the knife.

"What, you want it out? Sorry, no, ok-" Castiel's fingers wouldn't work at all, but his glare was plenty eloquent, and Dean got into position again and pushed the knife further up, cutting through two other symbols, while Castiel futilely tried to help.

A small, wet whimper escaped the angel's lips, and Dean flushed, a treacherous tiny part of him enjoying the process not only because it was going to free Cas, but precisely because of the power and the pain that he was currently wielding. Dean closed his eyes, deeply ashamed, and with a grunt of effort managed to slice clear through the rest of the symbols and the upper part of the circle.

He heard a lusty sigh, and when he chanced to look there was a small, contented smile lurking on Cas's face. "Dean," he croaked, voice as wreaked as when he'd appeared in the dream, "what are you doing here?"

"Eh… I'm- I'm the one who gripped you tight and lowered you from the ceiling, you dumbass."

Castiel's smile lingered for a moment, then he blinked and sighed. "Will there ever come a time when you'll heed my requests and actually do as I ask, instead of the opposite?"

"What, no 'thanks for busting my ass out, Dean'?" He blinked, and suddenly the marks on the angel's chest weren't there anymore, nor was the gash he'd just cut, or the blood staining the clothes and covering his hands. Suddenly he was just leaning over, and half-straddling, a half-naked guy. He scrambled back and off him.

"No. I told you I was working on freeing myself." Cas sat up smoothly and tilted his head, knife still protruding from his chest.

"Yeah... no, I could see that," Dean nodded sarcastically. "The moment I stepped in here I thought 'oh, look how close to busting out he is! But since I came all this way, might as well'..."

Castiel frowned, somewhere between reproachful and puzzled. "I was healing the sigil," he said slowly, passing a hand up his chest, "It was keeping me imprisoned inside this body. Another day or two and I would have been done." He pulled the knife out and offered it, handle first. "Now leave. I'll follow as soon as I can."

The wound slowly closed under Dean's eyes. "What? No way, Cas! You're coming with us _now_," he replied, taking the knife and then gripping the other by the forearm, tugging him so they stood up together. The iron chains hanging from Castiel's wrists broke to pieces, which rained down to the floor with a crashing, torrential sound; only the manacles directly encircling the skin remained.

"I can't. They'd notice immediately, and we wouldn't stand a chance. I won't take long. I _would_ ask you for your back-up blade though." He frowned at the walls at large, gaze encompassing all the shiny symbols surrounding them. "I have work to do."

oooooo

Dean floored the Impala down the dirt road, making Sam dig his heels in the foot-well just to avoid bouncing around like a puppet while he tried to scope a route on the map. "I know they weren't contemplated when this car was made, Dean, but seatbelts-"

"-are not getting into my baby, and you can shut up now. Found a place yet?"

"If we're going to use Dharma's 'vial' we need somewhere that's densely populated. The town's not exactly ideal, but there's this mega-mall that serves three counties that's only about thirty miles out. It's got three motels. And, huh, 'the world's biggest collection of motorized lawn mowers'."

Dean spared him a look. Sam pulled a bitchface. "Look-"

"Sounds good. And crowded. And… Shit! Where the hell is Castiel?" He slammed a hand on the steering wheel. "It's been almost an hour! We can't run around back roads all day! And we can't pull the vial thingy without him! Screw this, I'm going back!" He pulled a hair-pin turn and sped back the way they'd come, Sam hanging on to the door-frame for dear life and cursing almost as much as Dean.

They'd re-traced their steps about half-way back when they spotted a trench-coated silhouette walking towards them in the heat haze. He kept walking calmly in their direction even as they kept accelerating, and then Dean had to slam on the breaks to avoid running him over.

Castiel blinked owlishly at them through the windshield, looking pretty rough. He hadn't buttoned back up the shirt, which was being held closed only by the tie, and in the gathering dusk he looked wan and pale. The Winchesters got out of the car and stared from behind the cover of the opened doors. That's when they saw that he wasn't even wearing any shoes.

Castiel held their gazes and shook his head. "One day," he said, sounding even more hoarse than before, "one day I will issue a simple instruction and you will follow it to the letter. I'm looking forward to that day." He wavered on the spot and then fell to his knees.

The brothers immediately rushed to him. "What happened? Did they come for you?" Sam asked, while Dean was busy running down the list of all the swear words he possessed and getting a shoulder under Cas's arm to haul him up. The angel still had the manacles on his wrists, they discovered.

He shook his head, letting them help him into the car. "No. I managed to slip out unnoticed. It will go undetected until they physically come and check, an eventuality I cannot predict. We might have days, and we might have hours. Some assistance in concealing would not go amiss."

"We got that covered," Dean assured him. "What the hell, Cas? Why were you walking? Did you- are you ok?"

"No," he answered simply, tone calm and collected. "Something happened to my wings. I can't- walking was my only option." He paused, eyes sliding towards the window to his side. "Thank you for coming back for me. I was not looking forward to reaching you that way," he admitted, giving a sigh and sitting back. He looked and sounded exhausted.

"Can you fix whatever happened to you? Will you get better?" Sam insisted, sharing a horrified look with his brother.

"I won't know until I inspect the actual damage. And for that I'll need external help to shied my presence from my b- kin."

"Working on it," Dean chirruped, already turning the car towards a paved road and pointing it decidedly towards more populated areas.

oooooo

The mega-mall was, well, _big_. It was practically the size of a town, only with a lot more people than they had hoped to find at that time in the evening. Apparently between the pubs, the restaurants, the movie arcade and the motels (plus a club somewhere, though it was never clear exactly where), the place never closed.

They had checked into the only strip motel there so they could keep an easier escape route and settled for the night. Dean had offered to get a fold-out bed for Castiel, but the angel had insisted that he didn't need it and that he wasn't going to sleep, despite looking increasingly like death warmed over. True to his word, he kept watch all night while the humans got some much needed rest.

He'd also seemed by turns impressed and amused by the signal-scrambling vial, or as much as he ever _seemed_ anything. Dean for his part was disappointed that, once uncorked, the vial hadn't poured smoke like dry ice, but only a faint wisp of vapor.

They hadn't exchanged much information. Castiel said that he was 'aware of what had transpired', whatever that meant, and he didn't want to elaborate on what had happened to him. Which, to tell the truth, was fine by Dean. Unfortunately he was also infuriatingly tight-lipped on how to help Sam.

"All Zach-the-dick had to offer was to kill Sam, rip out the original parts of his soul and stick them in heaven's equivalent of a garden shed! There has to be something else we can do- there just has to!"

Castiel had simply informed them that angelic 'purification' was not a pleasant death. Or quick. But that it was true that it would save Sam from eternal damnation. Which they had pretty much already guessed by themselves, thank you very much.

The angel had also explained that Sam's case was unique in history, and therefore no one could know for certain that there weren't alternatives, which didn't exactly encourage either of them, though both pretended it did to reassure the other.

Morning, with its additional people crowding the shops all around them and helping to hide them better, found the brothers hanging around the Impala at the far end of the parking lot, with a ten-year old TV set and six light-bulbs hidden on the back-seat.

"I wonder what they look like. D'you think we'd go blind if we took a peek? Or is he just shy? Maybe for angels it's a prudish thing," Dean rambled on, trying to coax a smile out of Sam, but his brother was sullen and clearly nursing a headache. He kept rubbing a hand over his forehead, nodding to indicate that he was listening, but not adding much beyond the occasional grunt.

Dean was starting to get bored. "How much longer do you think this is going to take?"

He had scarcely finished uttering the words when a flash of light illuminated the whole place like lightning in a clear sky, followed closely by a wave of sound that Dean recognized as the angel's true voice. It tore through the motel, smashing all the windows of all the rooms, and across the parking lot, making windshield after windshield explode. Everywhere car alarms started up, and people started screaming, running out of their rooms.

Sam and Dean exchanged a horrified look and sprinted back to their room, where everything was still and nothing seemed to be happening anymore. Dean launched himself against the door, shoulder first, and broke it open with the momentum.

Inside it was total chaos. All the furniture was upturned, including the beds that were standing on their heads against the wall, and many of the fittings were smashed beyond repair. And there were feathers, bloodied feathers everywhere. It was like a macabre snow globe that had just been set back down after having been shaken with the utmost force. In the middle of it all, Castiel was sitting on his haunches, hugging himself tightly and shaking visibly. Two red stripes of congealed blood glistened on his back, through and over the trench coat.

Dean immediately went for him, but just before he could touch his shoulder the angel looked at him and snarled "Don't touch me!" with such violence that Dean recoiled in shock. A feather slowly glided in front of his face, and he grabbed it out of reflex. It had looked blindingly white in the air, but clutched between his fingers it shimmered a myriad of deep colors, from dark red to forest green through navy blue. It was beautiful and supernatural and suddenly it hit him that it was _Castiel's_.

"Holy shit," he whispered.

"Dean, Cas! Hurry up, we gotta leave!" Sam yelled, bursting back into the room after having brought the car up to the door. A burning smell snapped Dean out of his fugue; the electrical wiring was starting to ignite.

"Cas! Can you walk?" Sam continued, gathering their duffels. The angel looked up and nodded quickly, jerkily, lips pursed tightly and jaw clenched. He raised a hand and pointed to the ceiling. After a moment the fire alarm started blaring. Dean helped getting their stuff together; there wasn't much lying around, only a couple of books and assorted weapons they had hidden for protection, and inside two minutes there was nothing that could tie them back to the place. The fire would take care of the rest.

Castiel staggered to his feet, arms still firmly wrapped around himself, and limped to the car, more or less falling onto the back-seat in a tightly coiled ball. All the side windows were spider-cracked and not transparent anymore. The brothers finished smashing out the front ones before jumping in themselves and making their escape.

The car tore out of the parking lot, unnoticed in the confusion of people running around and panicking. A couple of minutes later Dean chanced a look in the rear mirror, noticing with relief that no one seemed to be pursuing them. Castiel was sitting, hunched away from the back-rest and crowded to the side by the-

"Uh oh! We forgot to put the TV back in," Dean said, finding it funny.

"Probably for the best," Sam replied tightly. "They would have noticed it. It's the only thing that didn't break."

* * *

next chapter up tomorrow


	4. Chapter 4

RATING: R gen, pre-slash Dean/Castiel

SPOILERS: For the Season 4 finale, and not beyond

CHARACTERS: Sam, Dean, Bobby, Castiel, Zacharia  
SUMMARY: Post 4.22. What might have happened after the "to be continued" whiteout. With extra helpings of h/c.

WARNING: Graphic violence

Disclaimer: Supernatural is owned by it's creator Kripke and the CW network, and I am in no way affiliated with them.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic is complete, and will be posted one chapter a day. Muchas gracias to Starrylizard for betaing the whole thing!

* * *

"I can hide," were the first words Castiel said to them after about forty minutes of running blindly away. He had gradually uncoiled his muscles, and now only looked supremely uncomfortable, which was a definite improvement over 'utterly miserable'. "You too. It'll be easier in a deserted area."

When they stopped to grab a burger-to-go, Dean surreptitiously checked the upholstery, but there was no blood. There was none on Cas's back either, which relieved him more than he was ready to admit. They had reached a medium-sized town and went directly on to search the outskirts for an empty house to squat in. It was depressingly easy to find one.

"Do you think the apocalypse's got something to do with the recession?" Dean mused while they inspected the decay around them. The ground floor was perfectly hospitable, though the kitchen was useless. There was even a few pieces of furniture left rotting, including a moldy couch which they 'generously' left to Cas while they hunkered down with their army-surplus blankets in the front room.

"Twenty-ninth seal," Castiel deadpanned. Privately they would argue whether he was joking or not.

The angel pronounced the house 'suitable' and set to work with some chalk he lifted off them, scrawling symbols on each wall and on every door. He moved stiffly around, but refused any offer of help.

"You still in pain?" Dean finally asked.

"Yes."

Dean thought of the clumps of feathers lying around bloody in the motel room, like somebody had grabbed handfuls of them and _pulled,_ and of the blood that had seeped through three layers of clothes on his back. "And… the wings? How are they?"

Castiel closed his eyes for a moment and twitched. "Shredded," he said tonelessly, like it didn't regard him.

"Oh god," Sam murmured, "will you be able to heal? Is it permanent?"

Castiel paused, and considered his answer. "This isn't the first time it's happened to me. Remember that I am- that I was a soldier of Heaven."

Just as Dean realized that he hadn't really answered them, the angel stepped back and declared the wards done. Then he turned and ordered Sam to take off his shirt.

"Hum, what??"

"I believe you'd like some help with your withdrawal symptoms, correct? I've been pondering the matter, and I believe I've come up with a spell that could relieve them. Now take off your shirt and sit down on the ground," he fished Dean's back-up blade that he'd borrowed the day before out of his breast pocket. Sam gulped, but did as he was bid.

The angel examined Sam's naked back, frowning seriously, ordered him to stay still and keep his spine straight, and then slashed his own palm open, blood welling up and starting to drip. Dean winced, seeing clearly the way two fingers had jerked in the wake of the blade. Tendons had snapped. This 'instant healing' thing kept making Castiel treat his vessel with a certain reckless abandon that could make him uncomfortable to be around.

Castiel started to paint a methodical series of symbols on Sam's back in a confident hand, explaining that he was combining two spells. "One is used among my… kin, to help heal our human vessels if the angel cannot on their own. The other is used to subdue demons and their influence on their hosts." He added a few strokes, then sat back and examined his handy-work before continuing. "As you know we can influence time… bend it on occasion. We can also slow it to a crawl, or speed it up. I cannot undo what is already done, but I can stop the changes that are happening now."

He circled around and crouched in front of Sam, raising up his hands, no longer bloodied, to cradle the human's face. He looked him deeply in the eyes, expression kind. Sam's eyes widened, and his mouth went slack, a look of awe stealing across his face. "With my blessing, Sam Winchester," Castiel finally murmured, swiping his thumbs gently under Sam's eyes, and kissed him on the forehead.

The angel straightened and looked sideways at Dean. "It is done," he confirmed quietly, before offering the knife back. Dean shook his head. "It's yours. In fact, here, take this too," he grabbed his duffle and got the sheath out, and offered that instead. Castiel tilted his head to the side, looking at him quizzically. "Come on, you need your own knife! You'll never know when you'll need to do some of these blood spells of yours."

Castiel took the sheath like it was something precious, which embarrassed Dean. Even without considering the demon-killing knife, this one still wasn't one of his best blades, but it had served him faithfully as a back-up for the last ten years, and he considered it a reliable knife.

"Thank you," Castiel said seriously. He slipped the knife in the sheath and put it back in his breast pocket. He grimaced, rolling his shoulders stiffly.

Dean was about to ask him again how he was when Sam shook himself and let out a breathy "oh!" Holding up a finger to stall the angel, Dean turned to his brother, checking him over. Sam seemed dazed, even stoned, but in a happy, relaxed way that he hadn't been in far too long. Dean felt himself smile and something lodged deep in his chest easing at the sight.

"Hey, Sammy? Feeling better?"

Sam blinked and smiled lazily. He nodded, stretching his arms up and arching his back, popping his spine with a satisfied smirk. "What does it look like?" He asked, trying to peer over his shoulder. "Hey!" He exclaimed, grabbing Dean by the arm and bugging his eyes, "do I have to keep the blood on? Can I take a shower or is it going to break the spell?"

"Moot point, kiddo, no showers for anyone while we're holed up here," Dean replied, looking around to ask Castiel but finding the room empty of supernatural beings. "Sam, why don't you get comfortable here while I find out?"

He left his brother to his own devices, and went looking for Cas. He found him sitting on the sagging couch, elbows planted on his knees and chin tucked between his fingers, staring contemplatively out in space. Dean went to sit next to him, and the cushions gave way with a sluggish, wet groan, depositing him much closer than he had intended, practically plastered against his side. He tried to adjust, but that proved even more embarrassing, so he simply stopped, leaning rigidly away. Castiel didn't seem to mind either way.

"How much of what you did was real angel mojo and how much was just make believe?"

Castiel blinked, surprised, then he cut his eyes sideways and gave half a smirk, same as he had once on a park bench, so many months before. "About half and half. Your brother is strong, but he was giving up his fight. Hope, faith… it can be a very powerful force, for humans."

"What about for angels?"

"That's very nearly all we're made of."

They sat in silence for a bit. Dean was even starting to feel less awkward. "Cas, how long is that spell going to hold?"

"I'm not pretending that it isn't just a temporary reprieve… It does not cure, just delay. But we'll keep casting it every time it fades. I've been thinking about a more permanent solution, but purifying a soul isn't easy, or common. The way we- the way the angels usually do it, it's too traumatic, too sudden. There is no definitive evidence, but I doubt he'd survive. The only other entities that hold comparative powers are Earth spirits."

"What, ghosts?"

"No, no, you misunderstand me. You might know them as… demi-gods, though that term is incorrect, they're more… guardians of creation, here on Earth. They rarely interact with humans, now that they're no longer openly worshipped, but they're still here, and their powers are immutable."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold it right there, Cas. We've met some of these pagan gods, and they were all bad news, killing people, eating them… I don't see how we could get anything helpful out of those sons of bitches."

Castiel gave a little, exasperated sigh. "Have some faith, Dean. The life you've led has skewed your perception of the supernatural, but there are benign beings out there. The natives to this country practice many cleansing rituals that could help, but… the hurdle I haven't been able to get past is that these are tied to the land, to specific places, and you and your brother… you have no place that owns you."

Dean snorted, shaking his head. "If the Impala had a guarding demi-god we'd be set," he chuckled, and bumped his shoulder against Cas, who went very rigid and clenched his jaw. "Oh, shit! Sorry, sorry, is it your back? Listen, Cas, do you want to try a painkiller?"

The angel turned his head to look at him, eyebrows knotted tightly. "Pain… killer?"

"Yeah, you know, pills, or- I think we still have some shots. I'll need to check, if not I'm sure we can score something in the town; we need to re-stock badly anyway-"

"Chemicals would have no effect on me."

"Oh. Well. That sucks." He scratched the back of his head. "Checking doesn't seem to have done you much good. I mean, you were better before this morning."

"I think confronting the evidence merely made it more difficult to ignore. I wasn't… very lucid when it happened. I didn't think- I wasn't expecting my reaction to be so disrupting, or I wouldn't have done it near so many innocents. Or risk you being detected in my company."

"Hey, no worries, besides, the magic vapor vial worked, right? A little fire and a lot of insurance, and we're scot free from the people too."

Castiel grabbed him by the forearm. "Dean, listen to me. It's very important that Zachariah doesn't find me with you. It would give him great power over you. If I grow too weak-"

"Ok, stop it right there. What kind of power are we talking about? And isn't there anything we can do to help you heal quicker?"

"The kind that you do not want him to have. And unfortunately no, there is a blood spell, but only another angel could perform it. It wouldn't work on myself."

"What if we could get word to Anna?"

Castiel closed his eyes, bowing his head. "She cannot help either you or me anymore."

The news shot a pang through Dean's heart, but he didn't ask for details yet. The grief and disappointment was enough at the moment. "So, you need an actual holy presence or just the blood?"

"Both. Either, it's not- important. I can't have it, so there is no use discussing it further." And with that he hunched in himself, looking stubbornly at his feet, which were still bare. They should have gotten him some new shoes while they were still at the mall, where it would have been easier.

Dean made a resolution to hit the town, get a few supplies, and check out an idea that had started to form in his mind. "Oh, just one more thing: do those symbols need to stay on his back, or can Sam wash them out?"

"Either shouldn't affect the spell," Castiel said dully.

Dean nodded and went back to the other room. Sam had sprawled face down on his blankets, letting the blood dry on his back.

"Bad news, bro, no shower for you for a very long time, looks like. Cas says those need to stay on."

Sam groaned in his balled up jacket, and Dean grinned.

oooooo

Dean paid a thorough visit to a 7/11 and a CVS, and then sneaked through a church with a couple of gallons of water. He got to talk with a priest, a Franciscan who had served in a slum outside Rio for fifteen years before his superiors deemed his methods too 'eccentric' and had returned him to the heartland for a loving re-introduction to 'civil' Christian society. He told some pretty good jokes, and even though he didn't tip his hand one way or the other with regards to hunting and the supernatural, he let Dean go with enough blessed water to bathe in and a little extra something that Dean presented to Cas the moment he got back.

"Blessed oil and consecrated wine from this morning's Mass," the angel recognized the moment Dean produced the items.

"How the hell did you know that?"

Castiel looked at him like he'd just asked something very obvious. "I can tell."

"Right. Well. So, I was thinking we can try and make our very own holy blood substitute. If you draw me a diagram I'll paint it on you… unless your spell works differently?"

Castiel looked at him. He was holding tightly onto the two little bottles and, though not smiling, his whole face had lit up.

"It's worth a shot, isn't it?"

He inclined his head, almost a little bow. "Thank you, Dean."

"Hold on a sec," Sam called, rummaging through the food bags. "Are you calling dibs on anything? Because I'm starving, and if the price is gonna be you whining about it after-"

"Cheetos and beer are mine. You can have your healthy water and rabbit food."

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

Dean looked with a little trepidation as Sam cracked open one of the water bottles he'd glued closed and took a healthy swig.

Sam squinted suspiciously at the brand. "This isn't Mountain Spring, it's got too much calcium!"

"You cannot possibly taste that, you ginormous geek!"

"Dean, I know what mineral water tastes like, and this ain't it. You've been gipped. Must be pipe water," Sam replied smugly.

"Well, yeah, whoever heard of blessing mineral water? It's a waste," Dean countered, smile slowly reaching full wattage at the dawning realization stealing across Sam's face.

"It's… holy water? I just drank-"

"Told you it was only temporary. You need to trust your older brother a bit more, you bitch."

"Yeah," Sam nodded, eyes going suspiciously bright, "yeah."

"You're _such_ a girl. See if you can find a way to heat up a couple of those soup cans while I play paint by the numbers with our resident angel, will you? I brought you a pink apron to match your girly mood swings."

Sam threw him one of the water bottles, and despite what the black eye may suggest, Dean was totally quick enough to dodge it.

oooooo

Cas insisted that Dean needed to learn the order in which each stroke of the sigil had to be made and had him practice on a piece of paper while he mixed up the oil and the wine to make something with a consistency comparable to actual blood.

"You sure you don't wanna add your own to it?"

"It would defeat the purpose."

"What about human blood? Would that help? I could give you some of mine, if you want," Dean offered. Cas didn't reply, but when Dean turned to look at him he found the angel regarding him with such gratitude that it was frankly downright embarrassing.

"Oh, don't you go and turn into a girl either, now. It's not a big deal, a few drops of blood."

Castiel frowned. "Do you consider me female? Because your gender differences don't-"

"Oh, god, we're not having the angel-sex talk right, now, ok? In fact, ever. Just hand over the knife and get those clothes off- goes on your back, right? Like Sam's."

The design wasn't simple but Dean had done much harder things in his life. The black bruises running up and down Cas's back did make him falter, once the angel had taken off his shirt and sat down backwards in the only high-backed chair in the house, arms resting up. No wonder he'd been in pain.

Candle light flickered warmly, bathing the room in a soft orange glow, while Dean stirred his own blood in with the oil and the wine. It felt not exactly holy in any way that a bible thumper would recognize, but ancient and sacred beyond books and human language.

Dean crouched down behind Castiel and began painting the mixture with his fingers, keeping his touch as gentle and feather-like as he could. Every time he passed over a bruise the angel shuddered, but didn't say anything. The muscles in his back were visibly knotted up and rigid with tension.

"Is it working?" Dean whispered, once he'd gotten through half of the diagram. Sam was in the next room, getting dinner ready, but between the darkness and the silence what he was doing felt incredibly private, even intimate.

"I think… yes. It's having some effect. Please continue." Castiel inclined his head, resting his cheek on the back of his hands. Dean kept going, slowing down now, fascinated by the process and somehow unwilling to actually finish. Once he realized that he was stalling, though, he picked up the pace again, annoyed with himself.

He gave the last stroke and Cas took a deep breath, letting it out slowly and sagging in the chair.

"So, it's done? How you feeling?"

"You have to give me your blessing now," Cas murmured.

"My… what? How? Like you did with Sam?"

Castiel raised his head, and shot him a look. He seemed half asleep, eyes heavy-lidded and dark in the flickering light. "It's _your_ blessing. You can give it however you deem it suitable."

Dean gulped, and nodded. He had no idea what his… blessing, of all things, would be like, but Castiel's way had looked… suitable enough that afternoon, so he went for that. He cradled the angel's face in his hands, swiping his thumbs under his eyes and over his cheeks, once, then twice for luck, mumbled "with my blessing, Castiel," and brushed his lips lightly over his forehead. He couldn't bring himself to do an actual kiss, but it seemed enough. Cas closed his eyes and let his head fall back, lips slightly parted.

Dean took it as a sign that the spell had worked.

"Mmmh," Castiel mumbled suddenly, frowning, "I feel… weird."

oooooo

The art of cooking soup cans on an open fire: a joy shared by cowboys, bums and Winchesters. Sam wasn't the best of cooks, but this was the kind of thing that could be called a success just by virtue of not letting the can explode under the heat and not burning down the house; ergo his dinner was a success.

He was contemplating the problem of spoons when Dean joined him, grinning in a way that was anything but reassuring.

"You've got to see this one, Sammy," he asserted, grabbing his brother by the shoulder and tugging him to the back room. Castiel was there, standing shirtless and squinting at a wall.

"Did you do it? Did it work?" Sam asked.

Dean jerked his chin towards the angel in reply.

"Huh, Cas? Did the spell work?"

"I have to check the perimeter," Castiel replied, slurring his words badly and listing alarmingly to the side. Dean snickered. The angel glared. "I am experiencing some side effects," he enunciated slowly.

"He's totally plastered!" Dean announced gleefully.

"I'm checking the perimeter," Cas countered indignantly. He tried to take a few steps towards the middle of the room but he tripped on his own bare feet and landed on his ass.

Dean started laughing out loud, while Sam was a little more mindful of what the angel would do once he was in full control of himself again.

"Come on," Dean coaxed, going to retrieve him from the floor without an ounce of self consciousness, "just take a nap while the high wears off, ok? We'll keep guard."

"This isn't acceptable," Cas grumbled while Dean manhandled him to the moldy couch, "I can't stay like this. I demand you break the spell immediately!"

"How are we supposed to do that?" Sam asked, suddenly more aware of the itchy symbols on his own back.

"With the… with the…" Castiel made whirring motions with his hands, "with the _thing_!"

"All right, all right, you lie down now and we'll get the thing, kay?" Dean deposited him face first on the couch, then loped out of the room, Sam in tow. "Dinner! Awesome, I'm starving!"

"Dean… are you sure we should leave him like that?"

"Hey, we still have that TV in the car! If we manage to sneak some electricity in here, d'you think we can keep Cas from exploding it?"

oooooo

Dinner was a torturous affair. Twice Castiel wandered out to their room, looking dazed and confused and worrying about the perimeter, and twice Dean had to stop slurping his soup directly from the can and steer him back to the sofa.

The third time the brothers had finally managed to finish their meal, and Cas was starting to look a little less punch-drunk.

"For the last time, the perimeter is fine! Lie down and stop worrying so much."

The angel narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. If it wasn't a pout, then it was a damn good impression of it. "This isn't right… the spell shouldn't have affected me like this," he groused, knuckling his eyes like a sleepy kid. "I'm serious, Dean, I'm far too open to attack, I can't even- this is dangerous for an angel. I could harm you without even realizing it."

And that pretty much put an end to any protest the humans could make.

Dean went back with Cas and retrieved what little mixture had been left over. "Erase the symbols," Castiel instructed, straddling the chair backwards again and resting his arms and his head on the high back. "Start from the last one and work your way back."

Easy. Dean scooped some of the oily substance with his fingers and rubbed it all over the last symbol, which was still faintly visible. Castiel hissed a breath, then asked him to continue.

"Have your wings healed at all?"

"I can't fly yet," he non-replied. "I will be fine. Keep going. I'm already feeling more alert."

Dean coated his hand and pressed it, open-palmed, on the next symbol. Castiel gasped and started trembling.

"This is ridiculous," Dean said, getting annoyed, "having you in a little ball of pain is not going to make you or us any safer. You absolutely sure a pill wouldn't help?"

"Yes," Castiel hissed, shuddering. Dean could actually feel the muscles coiling tighter and tighter under his fingers.

He undid the five last symbols quickly and bowed his head, hand lingering between the angel's shoulder blades. He pictured the wings sprouting from there, whole and huge the way they had been in the illusion masking the truth in the angel prison.

"Here's another thought: do you know how many times my dad threw out his back over the years, hunting? I mean total, cannot-move-to-save-his-life throwing out?"

"Seven."

"Aha! Nope, six."

"That _you_ know of."

"Ok, forget my dad. What I mean is that doping him up wasn't enough, and it's not like we could afford a physical therapist every time, so I learned some moves. Got me in a few girl's- ok, that's another story. The point is: wanna try? I can't do anything for your… wings -god, that's freaky- but your muscles have to be hurting, man: they hurt just to look at."

Castiel's shoulders shook, but Dean could swear that the angel was laughing. "So now I'm male?"

Dean went to get up and leave, but a soft calling of his name made him stop.

"Any help that doesn't put me out of commission is… greatly appreciated."

Dean settled back down, waited for a moment for some kind of smart-assed remark, and when none was forthcoming he gently put his hands on Castiel's back. The bruises had faded to a muted yellow, but Dean was still mindful of them as he started kneading the muscles.

Castiel kept still and didn't make a noise, but Dean could tell from the way he was breathing that it was hurting him. He started gentle at first, to let him accustom to the feeling and to remind himself of what he needed to do here –it had been years since the last time he hadn't used a massage as nothing more than foreplay with some girl- but once he got in the groove of it, getting a rhythm and testing out a good balance between pressure and muscle yielding, he started to work with more purpose, losing himself in the task.

Gradually the muscles began to relax and the knots to undo right under his fingers; Castiel started to straighten his spine, pressing into Dean's touch, and finally arched his back with a satisfied sigh.

Dean ran his fingers up and down, checking to see if there were more knots, and the angel shivered under his touch.

_Interesting_, Dean's mind supplied, and he tried again, eliciting the same reaction. Just then his treacherous subconscious reminded him of doing something similar in his infamous dream, which stopped him dead in his tracks. Good thing it was so dark in the abandoned house, because he was blushing like the proverbial bride.

"I feel weird again," Castiel mumbled, half asleep in his chair.

"Yeah, that can happen with massages. Sorry. Please don't freak out again."

"Of course not. Thank you Dean."

"Anytime. Huh, I mean- whatever. Don't tell Sam."

oooooo

That night Dean was ready to settle down with a vague sense of accomplishment until he spied Sam sitting up in the incomplete darkness, hugging his knees loosely and staring at nothing.

"What, not tired?" Dean grumbled.

Sam shrugged, the movement barely visible by the light of the moon creeping in past the drape-less windows. "I was just wondering where we go from here," he whispered.

Crap, Dean thought. Of course now that his brother didn't have his imminent fiery death by angel or by withdrawal to obsess over, he was free to brood and worry about everything else.

"We sleep," he groaned exaggeratedly, pretending he hadn't understood.

Sam was silent for a while, then he simply laid down and curled on his side, away from his brother.

Dean dreamt. He was standing in the attic, looking at Cas, who sat staring out at the starry sky from a box window. The angel was in his shirtsleeves, barefoot, and he had his wings at his back.

"Go back to sleep, Dean," he said, barely moving, still staring at the stars.

"I am asleep," Dean countered. "How could I get up here otherwise? The stairs have collapsed. Did you fly up? Everyone's brooding tonight-"

Castiel turned to regard him. His eyes looked strange, blue without pupils. He raised his hand, fingers outstretched, and poked Dean in the forehead.

* * *

final chapter will be up tomorrow!


	5. Chapter 5

RATING: R gen, pre-slash Dean/Castiel

SPOILERS: For the Season 4 finale, and not beyond

CHARACTERS: Sam, Dean, Bobby, Castiel, Zacharia  
SUMMARY: Post 4.22. What might have happened after the "to be continued" whiteout. With extra helpings of h/c.

WARNING: Graphic violence

Disclaimer: Supernatural is owned by it's creator Kripke and the CW network, and I am in no way affiliated with them.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic is now complete. Muchas gracias to Starrylizard for betaing the whole thing!

* * *

"Hey Castiel? You wanna try coffee? I know you don't eat, but coffee's coffee, you should try- What?"

Dean found the angel sitting cross-legged on the dirty floor in front of the couch, staring intently at the palms of his hands.

"The Host have discovered my escape," he said grimly. "We need to split up, it's no longer safe for you here."

"You sure? -Sam! Come here!- How do you know? Angel radio?"

Castiel shook his head and held his palms out so Dean could see them. Sam came in right behind him and stopped dead in his tracks. "Oh my god. Are those-?"

"You have _holes_ in your hands? Jeez, Cas, how the hell they manage that? I thought the wards you put up meant they couldn't find us!"

Castiel's face was blank as the blood seeped sluggishly out of two wounds in the middle of his palms. "The wards held. They are trying to force me out of hiding. I can stay in deserted areas and achieve nothing, or… I cannot mix with humans like this without risking a commotion."

"Holy stigmata," Sam said with disbelief, shaking his head. "They're smart; the wrong person sees you and before you know it there's going to be cries of 'miracle' from coast to coast."

Castiel nodded, grimacing. "Zachariah delights in these sort of cultural ploys." He curved his fingers slightly, then splayed them again, unable to clench them.

"Can't you heal them?" Dean tried half-heartedly.

Castiel didn't even reply.

"But how did this happen?"

"The shackles," Castiel replied, eyeing the iron bands around his wrists resignedly. "They can't locate me, but they'll always be able to reach me through them."

"Well, fuck them! Let's get a pair of heavy-duty pliers and cut them off right now, then!"

"No." Castiel said firmly, clenching his jaw stubbornly. "You cannot. I will not let you."

"But _why_ not?"

"Dean, remember when I told you that angels are creatures made mostly of faith? We are Faith and Grace, bound together by Obedience. When one of these fail, we come undone. I disobeyed, but I did not renounce my Faith in my Father and I'm not prepared to give up my Grace. I'm still an angel, disgraced and cast out, but _not fallen_. The shackles represent my disobedience. By keeping them I recognize and accept my kin's judgment. Presently they're the only thing that's keeping them from ripping my Grace away and casting me into Perdition.

"So you think you did something wrong?"

"I disobeyed: of course I did wrong. Dean… you keep judging my actions as if I were human, but you'd do well to remember that I'm _not_. I _am_ an angel, and Free Will is not part of our lot."

"So we run," Sam offered, "We help you keep your… hands hidden, and you keep putting the wards up. We knew they'd come for you eventually, this doesn't have to change anything."

Castiel got to his feet and fixed them both with a stern stare. "No," he said, tone brokering no discussion, "they'll find me eventually, and when that happens you cannot be by my side."

"Yeah, 'cause it'd give Zach 'the power', right? The power of what?" Dean questioned, poking the angel in the chest with impatience. "They can't kill me, because they need me. They'll what? Send me to Hell? Already have the ticket, bought and stamped. They'll refuse to help Sam? Didn't want that kind of help anyway! What is it you're so scared of, Cas?"

Castiel dropped his eyes for a moment, shaking his head, then looked Dean right back in the eye. He was angry, and scared, Dean realized suddenly, even through the collected mask.

"Dean, you are to be a Champion of the Host. As such, they will not suffer your soul to be coveted by Hell. But if you aid a disgraced angel you won't be granted entrance to Heaven either. Depending on how harshly you'd be judged, you'll either be left to wander the Earth forever or sealed into Limbo. I know it's difficult for a human to comprehend, but please place a higher value on how you are destined to spend eternity."

Dean gulped, paced and then shared a silent look with Sam. Contrary to what Castiel thought, Hell _had _taught him something about appreciating the importance of 'eternal'. Wandering the Earth forever didn't actually sound that bad, comparatively speaking, if he could be sure of not turning into a murderous ghost. And, selfishly, if he could have Sam with him.

"You can't leave us, Cas. Sam needs you… until we find a way to heal him permanently, we need your spell."

Castiel's eyes narrowed. "Don't make excuses. The spell is done and at the most it will need refreshing. I'll give you my blood, and you can do it yourself. But then you need to pack up and leave."

"The moment we're out of the wards they'll find us too," Sam objected halfheartedly.

"And if they cannot find you at all they'll start searching your friends."

"Bobby!" Sam exclaimed.

"But Bobby's safe," Dean interjected, "he put up additional protection."

Castiel frowned. "Has he enlisted the help of an angel?"

"Uh, no… but… Zach couldn't bring us up to his house, he dropped us off in the fields."

"Sam, Dean, think closely: he couldn't or he wouldn't? Only an angel can successfully repel other angels. Man-made wards will have little to no effect."

"Sonofabitch! He played us!" Dean turned and kicked the couch viciously, punching a hole in the musty fabric near the foot.

"We have to warn Bobby! Ok, they can intercept phones… I'm going to guess the internet isn't safe… Goddamit, we'll have to go there ourselves... and possibly walk right into a trap," Sam finished grimly.

"Yeah, and what else is new?" Dean groused resignedly, already trudging back to the main room to start packing.

oooooo

For some reason Sam was vehemently against using the phone to check on Bobby, even though anybody with a bird's eye view could tell just where they were headed like bats out of hell, and the angels _had_ to be able to track them now that they had no smoke vials or blood wards to hide behind.

"It wouldn't do us any good," he kept insisting, going so far as to making Dean promise that he wasn't going to sneak a call on the wayside. Whatever. It just meant that the drive, besides unbearably long, was unnecessarily tense to boot.

Finding the junkyard's gate thrown wide open but no sign of dogs anywhere didn't help. And finding the house empty, doors left ajar, was even worse. The Chevelle was also missing. As far as they could tell Bobby hadn't put up any of his usual protection, not even against ordinary human thieves. The simplest reason had to be that he hadn't had the time to do it.

"Angels are the dick-heads to end all dick-heads!" Dean swore when they checked the empty –door flung open- panic room.

"What possible advantage could kidnapping Bobby give them?" Sam wondered, heading back upstairs.

"Sometimes being a dick-head is its own explanation, Sammy," Dean countered tiredly.

"Huh, Dean?"

"What, Sam, what?"

Standing in the middle of Bobby's living room was a tall, young guy. It was the male angel that had escorted Zachariah on their last encounter. He was simply standing there, blinking at them.

"Great! Where's Bobby? What have you done with him?" Dean demanded instantly, while Sam hung back and surreptitiously checked the windows for other angels that might be hanging around.

The angel frowned. "We've done nothing," he replied, voice light and polite, "Robert Singer is on a business trip. He's checking possible demonic activity in Flagstaff."

"Bullshit," Dean threw back hotly. "He wouldn't leave everything wide open like this! Front door wasn't even locked!"

The angel shifted his weight from foot to foot, not looking particularly comfortable in his borrowed skin. "I opened it for you when I saw you coming. I thought you wouldn't have appreciated triggering the alarms."

"And what are you- never mind; is this 'demonic activity' even legit? Or did you guys set it up?" Sam demanded.

The angel put his hands in his pockets, half shrugging. "His business trip is likely going to be shorter than he expected," he said by way of a reply.

The Winchesters shared an exasperated look and moved to go out as one. The angel didn't stop them. Outside they found the woman in the creased business suit waiting for them.

"Finally you deign to show up," she muttered sourly, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

"Yeah, it's a real party," Dean groused in pretty much the same vein.

"Oh, the party hasn't even started yet!" Zachariah exclaimed, appearing on the porch. He nodded at the two other angels, who instantly went to stand in front of the Impala at the edge of the road, blocking the only way out.

"I have to tell you, Winchesters, carelessness begets incompetence. I don't like the ease with which you sauntered back here; you need to step up your game now that Lucifer's free… calm before the storm isn't going to last forever!"

"Why, what are you planning? Big showdown getting any nearer?" Dean bristled, moving with Sam away from all the feathery bastards and into the middle of the dirt yard.

Zachariah smiled, tilting his head a bit and leaning over the railing. "I'm merely warning you that this lull in demonic activity is coming to an end. Even Lucifer has limits to how much empty adoration he can enjoy before he's going to demand some cold hard facts from his spawn to back up all the cheering. He's started to get rid of those who had lost faith in him… sounds like the convention's starting to wind down. Pretty soon the lobbies will start whining for attention and all the free cards will disperse."

"Ok, thanks for the tip," Dean said, mock cheerfully. "If there's nothing else…"

"Tick tock Sammy," Zach held a finger up, wagging it at the younger Winchester. "I see what you did there, you know? Segues nicely into the second part of this evening's entertainment. There's a rogue angel on the prowl, and we don't like that. Just for appearances' sake, I'm going to ask now: you wouldn't happen to know where your pal Cas is right now, would you?"

"Screw you," Dean replied easily. Sam raised his chin defiantly.

"I have to admit, this is turning out to be a lot easier than I ever anticipated, what with his taint being all over you! By the way, don't think he'll save you in the end… he doesn't have what it takes. But then he's just a sniveling abomination-"

"Don't you dare call him that! He's more of an angel than you've proven yourself to be!" Dean said hotly.

Zachariah merely laughed, mock-wiping tears from his eyes. "And that proves how little you humans know of us. You make up what suits and consoles you the most, and you forget that we were created first, before our Father even thought of you, and we serve only Heaven, not Man," he sauntered down the porch steps and clasped his hands behind his back, looking at them shrewdly.

His words made the brothers shiver. The two sidekicks moved in unison and went to grab them by an arm, not violently or roughly, but with an iron grip that would have shamed an industrial press.

"If I'm not much mistaken, that is fresh traitor blood you are carrying with you," Zachariah said delightedly, snapping his fingers and beckoning. The male angel dug Dean's flask out of his jacket pocket and threw it to his boss, who caught it deftly.

"Let's get down to the business part of this serendipitous encounter, shall we?" Zachariah unstopped the flask and poured the blood on his fingers. He knelt in the dirt and traced a symbol right there. No sooner had he finished than a powerful gust of wind blew across the property, making branches groan on the trees and forcing Sam and Dean to hide their faces in the crook of their arms, protecting their eyes. Dirt whipped up all around them, and the force of the wind was such that breathing became a struggle to suck air before it rushed past. Clouds started to gather over them, gray and heavy with moisture, crackling with ozone.

For a moment it all stopped, like reaching the eye of a tornado, the world holding its breath in the heavy humidity, and between one blink and the next Castiel was there.

Zachariah raised a hand and clenched his fingers, jerking his fist back. Pulled by an invisible power, Castiel's wrists locked together in front of him and he fell to his knees, almost sprawling in a mockery of submission.

"Well, that was almost as disappointing as sitting back and waiting for those two to sniff their way back here like two clueless puppies. If I'd have known it would be so simple to smoke you out of your hole, _Cas,_ I wouldn't have bothered with these," Zachariah crouched down in front of Castiel and pointed with a finger to the wounds in his hands, still oozing blood. With deliberate slowness he pushed his finger right inside the hole through the right hand, and wriggled it. Castiel shuddered, but didn't emit a single sound.

"Waste of time. Clearly overestimated your brains. Or perhaps just your sense of self-protection in the wake of you changing allegiance. You _had_ to know what would happen if you gave your blood to the humans," Zachariah continued, casually prodding and poking at the wound in the left hand. When he straightened back up the lesions started to close, slowly at first, and then suddenly the hands were completely healed, whole and unmarked.

Castiel raised himself to his knees, looking right back at his former boss without a hint of submission despite the way his wrists were still locked together in front of him. Zachariah regarded him coolly for a long moment, then curled his lip in a sneer and kicked a spray of dirt right in Castiel's face, a display of pettiness that the two angel guards must have found as unexpected as the humans, judging by the way they shifted uneasily by their sides. Castiel didn't even flinch.

"Still keeping the shackles of shame –love a little alliteration, don't you?- how very… dutiful of you. Wouldn't it just be easier to take them off, I wonder?"

Castiel spat a reddish mouthful of dirt, keeping his eyes straight ahead. "I do not recant my actions… nor do I repent them, if that's what you want to hear," he said quietly but firmly.

"No, I don't suppose so, but what about _regret_? You disobeyed, Castiel, you've been cast out, and it's been all for nothing. You're not a soldier of God anymore."

Castiel visibly flinched. "I still serve God. I've only refused orders that are of your own making."

"Don't toy with human logic, Castiel, you know that's not applicable. And who am I, anyway? What place do I hold? … Answer, you little snake."

"You are a Commander of the Host."

"Precisely. And who created me thus? I think you can see where this is going, so let's nip all this in the bud and continue, shall we? You'll be glad to hear that, considering all the Eons of faithful service you provided, you've been deemed worthy of sacrificing your life in the service of the Lord."

Dean, who'd been quietly waiting on the sidelines, mindful of attracting attention to himself and his brother, flared with indignation. "_That's_ your idea of a treat??"

"Hold your tongue, Winchester, this is in your best interest. Let's say for one that instead of giving him a purpose we decide to just string him up and make an example out of him. And then go after everything and _everyone_ that aided him in his escape. A lot of meaningless deaths, in the long run. However… you do want your brother to live out a natural life here on Earth, don't you? More than anything?"

Castiel's eyes widened. He raised his hands, wrists still locked together, and opened his mouth in a shout –only the sound that came out of his lips wasn't human, it was his true voice, and it tore across the space all around wreaking damage like a bomb, breaking every piece of glass and pulverizing eardrums right inside the humans' skulls.

The force of his cry pushed the angels back about a yard, feet dragging tracks in the dirt, but an instant later the two sidekicks disappeared and re-appeared right behind him, grabbing him by the shoulders and forcing him up. Zachariah, looking furious, raised his hand and a pulse of light shot right out of his palm, rushing towards Castiel and then slowing to push through his chest. His back ignited with flames that burned quick and blue, and suddenly it was all done.

The two angels released Cas, who slumped down and fell on his back, staring up, unseeing, to the sky.

Zachariah brushed his hands together with the satisfaction of a job well done and then disappeared. A moment later he was behind Dean and clapped him hard on the ears, healing them instantly.

He didn't even have the time to process what had happened before Sam was healed too in the same way. "You killed him!" Dean yelled immediately, whishing there was something, anything he could hit the angel with that would _hurt_.

"No, I merely made him… shall we say, ready to heal your brother. Sealed him inside the human shell... fused them together if you will," he clasped his hands together, illustrating his words. "Makes his blood extra special. Now it's simple, really: drink as much of it as you have demon blood, and the two cancel each other out. You'll be human again."

"And what's the catch?" Sam demanded, holding his head high and looking Zach straight in the eye.

The angel smiled. "Learning to ask the right questions, are we? Well, you'll need to suck him dry, for this to work. Miss the balance and you'll find yourself with just another addiction to replace the first one… one we're _not_ going to indulge, you understand."

"And what's the other 'pertinent detail' you aren't telling us?" Dean added, coming to stand next to his brother.

Zachariah snorted. "So mistrustful! What makes you think there is anything else?"

"Direct questions will do you no good, you know? He can evade those 'till kingdom come!" Replied a new, not entirely unfamiliar voice.

A vinyl sofa, light blue and decorated with a fluffy white cloud motif had appeared in their midst. And lounging on it was-

"Sonofabitch! What the hell are you doing here, Trickster?" Dean demanded, because the angels seemed too busy frowning to do much and Sam had grabbed him by the sleeve, more or less clinging like he had when they'd been at Lucifer's grand entrance.

"Ah," Zachariah said, snapping his fingers like he'd just figured it out, "you must be what they call Coyote in these parts of the world. What do you want?"

"And I have many names," the Trickster intoned, mouth settling in a grin over some private joke, "but in this instance you may call me _Machina, Deus Ex Machina_," he continued in Sean Connery's voice. Not an imitation, however good: Sean Connery's _actual_ voice.

"You," he pointed at Zachariah, miming a pistol, "are a pompous ass. That makes you my business to begin with. But attempting to subvert the natural order!" He shook his head, tsk-ing, "that really pissed me off. Earth is Earth, is not Hell is not Heaven. You can't take over here like that. Didn't Daddy ever tell you? And shame on you for playing around with the humans just because you can! That's my job here, and I'm not giving it up just like that!" He clapped, thrice, and Sam gasped next to Dean, bringing a hand up to his throat.

"That's the demon blood in the boy taken care of! Now whatcha gonna do? No reason they'll do your dirty work for you and kill a faithful angel of the Lord now! One that has done kindness unto them, to boot! And if they don't, they can't get automatically dammed and sent straight to the bottom of the Pit, can they? Amateur work, my feathery friend, amateur work."

Zachariah's perpetual superior smirk faltered, and he swiveled to stare suspiciously at Sam, who was blinking and breathing heavily but seemed otherwise unharmed.

The angel shook his head incredulously. "You worthless little blasphemous creature. How dare you interfere with-" The Trickster blew him a kiss and suddenly Zach vanished, same as if he'd been banished by a blood spell.

The two angel heavies bristled in their spot, looking at the demi-god wearily and clearly unsure of how to proceed.

"Yo! You two," he addressed them, waving cheerfully. "Don't worry! I just sent him somewhere far away to reflect on his mistakes. Soon as he's finished writing 'I will not mess with Earth' a hundred times on the blackboard he'll be free to go."

The two angels looked at each other. The woman looked stern, but the man quirked, and quickly hid, a grin. "Well," she said, frowning, "It's not like any of our debriefings covered this scenario."

The guy nodded quickly. "I think we'd best seek Revelation."

She nodded, just as quickly, and then they were abruptly gone.

The Trickster turned, raising his hands victoriously. "Nobody messes with my toys!" He exulted. He jumped back on his couch, stretching luxuriously. "Now, I suggest you find yourself a good explanation, because the police, they are a-coming. I can't wait to see how you're getting out of this!" He chuckled and vanished, the sound of sirens starting faintly in the background.

oooooo

"This isn't going to work, Dean!" Sam yelled while he frantically kicked dirt over all the blood on the ground.

"Better ideas, Sammy? Still waiting for 'em!" Dean yelled back in between curses. Castiel wasn't dead, but he wasn't in a good shape either, and they couldn't let the police see him like that. Which meant they had to move him.

Which was proving to be rather daunting.

"I'm blinded-" the angel said thickly, breathing very shallowly. He was having trouble moving his chest under the burns, and he had lost all coordination with his limbs.

"You're not blind, Cas, you're tracking movement! Can you hear me? Please work with me here…" Dean encouraged, trying to get him to sit up for a fireman carry. Castiel shuddered, arms wind-milling with no control and eyes rolling like a spooked horse. "I can't hear- who is this?" He hit Dean, more or less by mistake, but with enough angel juice that he possibly cracked a cheekbone.

"We can't do anything for the glass!" Sam was saying, running up to them with a blanket, keeping a wise couple of feet away. Dean gestured him impatiently to grab Cas from the other side, but Sam shook his head grimly. The police sirens were almost at the gate.

"It's me! Dean! Come on, Cas, we need to get you inside!" Dean grabbed the angel's face with both hands, forcing him to look him in the eyes. Not even the barest hint of recognition crossed Castiel's face.

He started panicking, breath coming shallower and shallower, until suddenly he sat up under his own power. His back was as badly burnt as his chest. Black against red, the same sigil that they had found him with was clearly visible on both sides through his tattered clothes.

"God, Cas, what did they do to you?" Sam whispered, darting forward to wrap him up with the blanket as gently as he could. Dean shook his head angrily, helping him tuck the edges in tight so his injuries didn't show.

A police car was coming up the path, kicking dirt and hitting every single pothole. The Winchesters sat on the ground on either side of Castiel, facing the new arrivals with their very best 'innocent' expressions. "I hope the Trickster is getting his jollies right now," Dean muttered darkly around his vapid smile.

"Me too," Sam said quietly, but much more sincerely.

The policemen had arrived, killed the siren and stepped out of their car slowly. It was two scrawny guys, the type of local yokels most often found on daytime tv, busy providing comedy relief. They looked about as competent as the Winchesters could have hoped for.

"Sirs?" One of them enquired, hand straying self-importantly to the taser gun at his side. "We received a call about a domestic disturbance. A… 'tiff between lovers'?"

Dean rolled his eyes. Sounded like the Trickster had gone out of his way to make his fun.

"Is Mr. Singer present on the premises?" The other cop continued, whipping his aviator glasses off smoothly.

"No, officer, our uncle's on a business trip," Sam replied pleasantly. "We're house sitting for him."

"There's just the three of us cousins here," Dean continued in the same vein, "I'm afraid there's been a misunderstanding… disgruntled customer- brought a real wreck and wasn't pleased when my uncle bailed on the job- and he's been threatening to call the police ever since."

"He probably realized you wouldn't come for the real reason, and made up that excuse," Sam finished, giving them a charming smile.

The two cops shared a perplexed look. They seemed a little disappointed that they weren't riding in to the rescue of some damsel in distress.

"What are you doing out here, sitting in the dirt like that?" The cop with the sunglasses asked, squinting at them suspiciously.

"Yoga," Sam said immediately.

"Communing with Nature," Dean said at the same time.

"We're very spiritual. This is a good time of the day to… find our Center," Sam continued.

"Are all those windows broken? We heard a noise before… sounded like thunder…" The cop fingering the taser said, obviously still hoping to get to fire it.

"The breath of Mother Nature shouldn't be left outside a true home," Dean replied seriously. "Uncle Robert gets a little claustrophobic in enclosed spaces," he clarified when his latest statement seemed to fly over their heads.

"What's the deal with him? Why isn't he saying anything?" The second cop huffed, getting impatient.

"Cas is meditating. In silence." Dean assured them firmly.

For his part, the angel had remained quiet, eyes wandering and unseeing, hunching slightly in himself. But when he heard his name he straightened his head, like a hound catching a scent.

Even the cops sensed the change. "What's he doing now?"

Castiel raised to his feet clumsily, and too suddenly for the brothers to stop him; the blanket slipped from his shoulders and crumpled at his feet, exposing his burns. To the civilian eyes of the cops they had to look grotesque.

They gaped. The first one started to frantically work the clasp of his gun, while the second one took two uncertain steps back.

The brothers got up as well, wary of touching the angel or spooking the cops any further. They didn't have time to intervene, though. Castiel shuddered, made a strange, guttural noise at the back of his throat and then his eyes and his mouth started to glow.

"Cover your eyes!" Dean shouted, followed closely by Sam. "COVER YOUR EYES!!"

But the cops stared. One of them managed even to take his taser out and to fire it, wildly missing his target. They only had a couple of seconds, as the light grew stronger and stronger. With no time to reach the civilians, the brothers hunkered down to the ground, hiding their faces in the crook of their arms, protecting at least themselves.

It was not unlike what had happened when Anna had retaken her Grace, only with more noise. In fact it felt and sounded as though lightning had struck right there or, more accurately, as if it had surged from the ground up.

Even behind his arm and facing the other way, Dean had a distinct impression of the light expanding horizontally, like a pair of fully deployed wings that spanned maybe twenty feet across. Dimly, he heard the cops screaming in agony.

When the light dimmed and finally snuffed out, and the Winchesters chanced to look again, they found that one of the cops had had a heart attack, fingers still clenched around his gun. Both of them had their eyes burned out. The survivor was sobbing, kneeling in the ground and holding his hands up in supplication. "Oh God," he kept repeating, "oh, God!"

oooooo

Epilogue

Dean dreamt of crossing a sun-dappled meadow with a box of fishing lures and a pole slung over his shoulder. Beyond the tree line a pier, equipped with a cooler full of beers and a chair, awaited him, overlooking a small lake.

But in the middle of the meadow there grew a huge oak, and sitting on one of the lowest hanging branches was Castiel. Dean stood in front of him as soon as he formulated the idea to head there.

Castiel looked good, normal despite the two huge wings at his back, the tips brushing the ground a little away from Dean. No way could Castiel walk on his legs with those things on, the span was just too large.

"Ever since I saw you with them I keep dreaming you like this," Dean explained, feeling no need for an actual greeting. They were inside his own head, that was plenty intimate already.

"You never really saw them," Castiel reminded him, smiling a little, "though this is a fairly accurate visual." He was wearing a pale blue shirt and a plain black tie, loosely knotted like he'd always had. He also had a new pair of black dress shoes on his feet. From the open top button of his shirt, Dean imagined he could glimpse the sigil Zachariah had burned right through him, though he knew it didn't actually reach beyond his collarbone.

"Black tie's for mourning," Dean said, gesturing with his fishing pole. Castiel nodded. The wings shifted, accompanying all his movements. "I guess Jimmy's gone for good, then," Dean continued, and Castiel inclined his head in acknowledgment.

"He managed to say goodbye," the angel said softly, looking up wistfully towards the higher branches of the tree. Dean knew he meant to the Novaks, and the knowledge relieved him a little. "I've never been so alone in my entire existence," Cas confided, hands still at his sides but wings tellingly drawing in towards his body.

"You'll learn, I know you will. And you aren't completely alone either. There's me. And Sam. I'd wait on trying to make nice with Bobby though, he's still pissed about the windows."

Castiel chuckled, the feathers wriggling in time with the short bursts of breath. "I don't know if it's possible for an angel to learn that. We are not meant for leading individual lives. Look-" He pointed up, where a beehive was teeming with life and honey, a picture right out of a Winnie-the-Poo book. "Privately you call us as birds, but those insects would be a more apt comparison. They are many, and each completes a task that is necessary, but none are irreplaceable save the one they all serve. If a worker leaves the others, it will inevitably languish and perish. That is how the Host works."

Dean huffed. "You have more brain than a bee, Cas! Give yourself a little credit. You go on about 'free will' and being part of the group, and yet you managed a big decision all on your own and, ok, it turned out shitty for you, but it was still the right one."

Castiel shimmied down the branch, coming to stand face to face with Dean, his wings stretching up majestically. "Our powers are great, Dean. That's why we're meant to serve only. It's dangerous when an angel takes decisions on his own. Look at what Zachariah achieved."

"But you'll do good. Don't judge free will on what Mr. supreme dick did… or will do. You're different, and you'll be all right. I- I believe in you."

"Is that a measure of Faith, Dean Winchester? Was this all it took to finally get you to Believe?"

He couldn't believe it. Castiel, he of the stern expression, Cas who never smiled and never understood sarcasm or irony, who let jokes go right over his head all the time, _that_ Cas was _teasing_ him.

"Oh, great. I'm just dreaming by myself, aren't I? I just gave an embarrassingly emotional pep-talk to a figment of my mind."

Castiel tilted his head. "Whatever you think is really happening in this instance, I believe it is now time for fishing."

The landscape rushed under their feet while they stood still, changing into the lake shore. Dean sat in the waiting chair and cast his lure. "Good dream," he approved, lounging back and smiling. "Not gonna last though, is it? All good things come to an end and all that…"

Castiel considered this, tilting his head from side to side. "Something's still troubling you," he stated, not unlike the way he'd talked to him the first time they'd met, nearly a year before.

"Sam seems fine," Dean confessed, reeling his empty hook in and casting it again. "Or he says so. Or… he believes so."

"And you don't?" Castiel sat next to him, feet hanging over the dock. His wings weren't there anymore. He had rolled up his shirtsleeves, exposing the shackles still on his wrists.

Dean shrugged. "It's weird. Some of his scars are gone as well, like on his arms when the ghouls- never mind. It's just… it's the Trickster. Can't see why he'd do something good for us."

Castiel nodded. He was staring intently at Dean's lure, bobbing hypnotically in the gentle waves on the lake's surface. "You forget that he's an agent of Chaos. He has a vested interest in guarding the balance between Light and Dark."

"Still, how long is it gonna last?" He reeled in and cast again. The fish weren't biting.

"I believe-" Castiel started, then narrowed his eyes. "I _know_ that what has happened is permanent. Coyote has great power over Time, but he _is_ bound by certain rules. He rejuvenated your brother's body by a year or so, enough to bring it back to his state of being before he started poisoning himself. A simple, yet elegant solution. But now Time has started again, and his body is aging on the normal path. The one he followed before doesn't exist anymore, or… not the consequences to himself at any rate."

"So he still has the demon blood from when he was a baby," Dean sighed. Reeling in and casting again seemed like too much work, so he left the lure out, bobbing empty.

"He is Sam 'as is', and as he's always been. Isn't that how you preferred it?"

Dean blinked. The lure swooped underwater once, then twice, signaling that he'd caught a fish. "Yeah!" He whooped, reeling it in. He turned to share a grin with Cas, but the angel was gone.

"Yeah," he repeated quietly, unhooking the fish and setting it free.

* * *

And that's the end folks! Hope you enjoyed the ride, and happy return of season five to all of us :D


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